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LETTERS 



OF 



JOHN RICHARD GREEN 



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Letters 



of 



John Richard Green 



EDITED BY 

<i; LESLIE STEPHEN 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd, 
I9OI 

^11 rights reserved 






THF tiBRARV OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two Comes Received 

OCT. 24 1901 

COFVRIOHT ENTRY 

CLASS A, XXo. NO. 

COPY a 



Copyright, 1901, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Norivood Press 

J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



PREFACE 

I MUST ask readers of these letters to take for granted 
that there have been sufficient reasons for the long 
delay in their appearance. A few words will explain 
my own share in the present publication. When Mrs. 
Green asked me to act as editor I replied that I 
thought myself disqualified by the slightness of my 
acquaintance with the writer. When, however, Mrs. 
Green, after considering this and other objections, came 
to the conclusion that under all the circumstances the 
proposed arrangement would be the most satisfactory 
to her, I could no longer hesitate. I accepted the 
position, and have tried to do the work to the best of 
my ability. I was encouraged by one obvious reflec- 
tion. Any editor, however well qualified for the task, 
must have accepted in the main the restriction which 
in my own case was imperative ; namely, that wherever 
it was possible the story should be told in Green's own 
words and the editor remain in the background. I 
have not been able, however, to confine myself entirely 
to annotations. The full significance of the letters can 
only be appreciated by readers who bear in mind the 
circumstances under which they were written. I have 
therefore found it necessary to write introductory nar- 
ratives in explanation of Green's position during sue- 



vi LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN 

cessive periods of his life. These are chiefly founded 
upon information given by Mrs. Green. She took 
down some autobiographical reminiscences from her 
husband's lips ; she is in possession of various note- 
books containing a fragmentary diary, and other jot- 
tings which illustrate his position ; and she collected 
information from his friends and family. The last 
part of my narrative embodies, as will be seen, in- 
formation which she alone could have given. She 
has, moreover, supervised the whole work, and made 
many invaluable suggestions and corrections. Although 
therefore I am responsible for all that I have said, it 
will, I hope, be clearly understood that any gratitude 
which may be due for the help afforded towards an 
appreciation of the letters is due mainly to her. I 
have also been helped in my task by articles con- 
tributed by Mr. Bryce to Macmillan s Magazine of 
May 1883; by Mr. Philip Lyttelton Gell to the 
Fortnightly Review of May 1883 ; by the late H. R. 
Haweis to the Contemporary Review of May 1883 ; 
by E. A. Freeman to the British ^arterly of July 
1883 ; by the Rev. W. J. Loftie to the New Princeton 
Review of November 1888; and by Mrs. Humphry 
Ward to the Associate (published for the " Passmore 
Edwards Settlement") of October 1898. Mr. Hum- 
phry Ward and Professor Boyd Dawkins have kindly 
entrusted me with manuscript reminiscences ; and I 
have especially to thank Professor Boyd Dawkins for 
other help of various kinds. 



PREFACE vii 

Most of the early letters are addressed to Professor 
Boyd Dawkins, and of the later to E. A. Freeman. 
Grateful acknowledgment for other letters is due to 
Mr. and Mrs. Humphry Ward, Mrs. Creighton, Miss 
von Glehn, the Rev. Canon Taylor, Mrs. a Court, 
Mrs. W. H. Wright (formerly Mrs. Churchill Bab- 
ington), and Miss Kate Norgate. Many letters 
written to other correspondents have unfortunately 
disappeared ; and readers must remember that a frag- 
mentary collection cannot give a complete, though, 
as far as it goes, it may give a very vivid picture 
of a surprisingly many-sided character and intellect. 

LESLIE STEPHEN. 



CONTENTS 

PART I 
Early Life ......... i 

PART II 
Clerical Career . . . . . . . .51 

PART III 
The "Short History" ...... 209 

PART IV 
Last Years . . . .. ... . .384 

SERMON 485 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 497 

INDEX .505 



LIST OF PLATES 

Portrait of John Richard Green, from a photograph by Fratelli 

Alinari, Firenze 1869 ..... Frontispiece 

Portrait of John Richard Green, from a Collodion print . 

To face page I 

Portrait of John Richard Green, engraved on steel by G. J. 

Stodart from the picture by F. Sandys . To face page 209 



PART I 



EARLY LIFE 



John Richard Green was born at Oxford on Decem- 
ber 12, 1837. The place of his birth had, as Freeman 
used to assert, an effect upon his sympathies. In the 
eighth century Oxford had been annexed by Offa to the 
kingdom of Mercia. Green therefore considered him- 
self to hold a " hereditary brief" for the Mercian leaders. 
Had he been born in Abingdon he would have been 
a Wessex man and taken a different view. How this 
may be I know not, but behevers in race would find 
it hard to trace any of Green's characteristics to the 
ancient possessors of his birthplace. Though no one 
was more thoroughly English in his sympathies, no 
one had less of the quality connoted by the " Anglo 
Saxon " of ordinary discourse. Neither can he be taken 
as a clear instance of the inheritance of genius from 
less remote ancestors. If indeed any previous Greens 
possessed genius, the position of the family was not 
favourable to its manifestation. His father, Richard 
Green, was son of a tailor, and is described as a 
" registrar and maker of silk gowns for Fellows." 
His mother's maiden name was Hurdis, and she 
was probably related to the Hurdis who was pro- 
fessor of poetry at Oxford at the end of the eighteenth 
century, and echoed Cowper in long-forgotten strains. 
Green always spoke of her as a woman of considerable 



2 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

ability, and believed himself to have inherited some- 
thing from her. The only member of the family 
who had literary tastes was his father's brother, John. 
He is said to have lent books, including Pilgrini s 
Progress^ to his nephew. John, however, was sus- 
pected of "atheism," and the father forbade a con- 
tinuance of loans which might have included authors 
of more dangerous tendency. A quarrel was produced 
by this interference. John dropped his family, refused 
to speak to his nephew, and left his money to a 
stranger. The Richard Greens had no special cultiva- 
tion, except that a strong love of music was common to 
them all. John Richard had a sister, Adelaide, older 
than himself, who lived with an aunt, married to a 
Mr. Castle, a hatter in the High Street. A brother, 
Richard, and a sister, Annie, were his juniors by two 
and eight years respectively. The father was a man of 
great tenderness and simplicity. John was constantly 
asking him questions, to which the ordinary reply was, 
" I do not know, but I will try to find out." Though 
not prosperous, he was determined to do everything in 
his power to secure a good education for his children. 
The elder boy was sent, when a little over eight, to 
Magdalen College School. The father died of consump- 
tion in November 1852; and the eldest daughter, to 
whom Green was passionately attached, was at the same 
time on her death-bed. The family was broken up. 
The mother had inherited a small income, and retired 
to a small village in Hertfordshire where she had to live 
in the strictest economy. The little money left by the 
father was made over to the Castles, to be spent upon 
the education of the children, whom they undertook to 
provide with board and lodging. The Castles appear 
to have been sensible and substantially kind ; but not 
given to any warm demonstrations of affection. 



I EARLY LIFE 3 

Meanwhile, though little favoured by outward cir- 
cumstances, Green had already given proof of a remark- 
able intellectual development. I can, fortunately, give 
the mostauthentic record of the impressions made during 
his early life from a letter written by himself in 1873. 



4 Beaumont Street, London, W., 
November 4, 1873. 

It is strange how much I know of your life, and how 
little you know of mine ! I see you now in your girl- 
hood as I saw you first, not indeed clearly as I see 
M., but stiir with a wonderful distinctness ; but what 
would you recognise of the pale-faced, grave-looking 
boy of eighteen which my first photograph recalls to 
me, or of the impulsive, sickly little fellow who figures 
in my schoolboy memories ? 

They are my first memories. I recall httle or 
nothing of childhood beyond a morbid shyness, a love 
of books, a habit of singing about the house, a sense of 
being weaker and smaller than other boys. Our home 
was not a happy one — the only gleam of light in it was 
my father's love for and pride in me. He was always 
very gentle and considerate ; he brought me up by love 
and not by fear, and always hated to hear of punishment 
and blows. I was fourteen when he died, but I recall 
little of him save this vague tenderness ; a walk when 
he encouraged me to question him "about everything " ; 
his love of my voice — a clear, weak, musical child's 
voice — and of my musical ear and faculty for catching 
tunes ; and his pride in my quickness and the mass of 
odd things which I knew. Looking back on the traits 
of his character which I recall, I see that he was a weak 
rather than a strong man, save in the strength of his love ; 
but I can never honour him too much, for his whole 
thought was of his children, and above all of me. We 
were poor, but he was resolved that I should have a 
good education ; and if I have done anything in the 
world since, it is to that resolve of his that I owe 



4 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

it. I recall not a single harsh word or look — his 
temper indeed was sweet and sunny save when it was 
overcast by the troubles of his life ; but I recall dimly 
instance after instance when he encouraged me in my 
love of books, or shielded me from the harsh rebukes 
of people who could not understand my absent, shy, 
unboyish ways. 

Books were my passion. I can recall now my first 
discovery of Don ^ixote, and the delight with which 
1 hoarded a stray volume of Hume which wandered 
into the children's room, and contained his character of 
Elizabeth. When I was writing my own character of 
her the other day I wondered whether in the days to 
come some shy, absent boy would find in it the delight 
I found in Hume's. I cared nothing for poetry in 
childhood ; the only imaginative element which found 
its way to me through books were the allegories of the 
High Church writers of the day, and 1 don't remember 
caring very much for them. But a child's life needs no 
poetry from books, for life is all mystery to it ; and one 
of the few scenes which stand out vividly from the dim 
background of those childish fears is my first sight of a 
funeral, — the boom of the bell from the church tower; 
the group gathered at its base amidst the rank grass 
and the big dock-leaves; the broken, fitful phases of the 
parson's voice as it floated up to me; the mound of red 
earth; the thud of the clod upon the coffin. I see them 
still, the little group breaking slowly up, the sexton 
filling in the grave and then going away, and then the 
empty churchyard, and the strange questionings in my 
own child-mind about death. Bells had their poetry 
for me from the first, as they still have, and the Oxford 
peals would always fill me with a strange sense of delight. 
And music in any shape was the pleasure of pleasures. 
One of my bitterest bursts of tears was when a nurse 
punished me for some childish freak by forbidding 
me to join in the hymns at church. I remember now 
the stair where I and my wee brother Dick used to sit 
and sing the chants we caught up on a Sunday, I extem- 



I EARLY LIFE 5 

porising a child's " second," with all the gravity in the 
world. And then there was the awe of listening to one 
of the college choirs and hearing the great organ at New 
College or Magdalen ! 

But all distinct memory, as I said, begins with my 
Magdalen schooldays. When I entered the Grammar 
School, which was then in a small room within the pre- 
cincts of the college, I must have been a little over eight 
years old, and I remained there till I was nearly fifteen. 
Magdalen was like a new world to me. At first my 
shyness made me feel dazed among so many strange 
faces and rough boy-ways ; but I was soon happy 
enough, and the new fun of games, small and weak as I 
was, carried all shyness away. I was never worth much 
at hockey or football, and at cricket I was all but useless 
for my short-sightedness, but I liked the rush and ex- 
citement of the playground; and I didn't shirk, because 
I was too proud to shirk, the kicks and the " scrim- 
mage." All that innerness of life, that utter blindness 
to outer things which leaves my childhood such a blank 
to me, disappeared with Magdalen. The college was a 
poem in itself; its dim cloisters, its noble chapel, its 
smooth lawns, its park with the deer browsing beneath 
venerable elms, its " walks " with " Addison's walk " in 
the midst of them, but where we boys thought less of 
Addison than of wasps' nests and craw-fishing. Of all 
the Oxford colleges it was the stateliest and the most 
secluded from the outer world, and though I can laugh 
now at the indolence and uselessness of the collegiate 
life of my boy-days, my boyish imagination was over- 
powered by the solemn services, the white-robed choir, 
the long train of divines and fellows, and the president — 
moving like some mysterious dream of the past among 
the punier creatures of the present. He was a wonder- 
fully old man, — over ninety, indeed he died on the very 
verge of a hundred, — the last man in Oxford who ever 
wore a wig. He had seen Dr. Johnson going up the 
steps of University, and standing astride over the 
kennel which then ran down the High Street, lost in 



6 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

thought.^ We boys used to stand overawed as the old 
man passed by, the keen eyes looking out of the white, 
drawn face, and feel as if we were looking on some 
one from another world. Once, when I won a prize he 
gave, the old man shook me by the hand and told me I 
was a clever boy. His voice was full and imposing — 
but it is odd to think now that I ever shook hands with 
a man who had seen Dr. Johnson. 

May morning, too, was a burst of poetry every year 
of my boyhood. Before the Reformation it had been 
customary to sing a mass at the moment of sunrise on 
the 1st of May, and some time in Elizabeth's reign 
this mass was exchanged for a hymn to the Trinity. 
At first we used to spring out of bed and gather in the 
gray of dawn on the top of the college tower, where 
choristers and singing-men were already grouped in 
their surplices. Beneath us, all wrapt in the dim mists 
of a spring morning, lay the city, the silent reaches of 
Cherwell, the great commons of Cowley marsh and 
Bullingdon now covered with houses, but then a desolate 
waste. There was a long hush of waiting just before 
five, and then the first bright point of sunlight gleamed 
out over the horizon ; below, at the base of the tower, a 
mist of discordant noises from the tin horns of the town 
boys greeted its appearance, and above, in the stillness, 
rose the soft, pathetic air of the hymn " Te Deum 
Patrem colimus." As it closed, the sun was fully up, 
surplices were thrown off, and with a burst of gay 
laughter the choristers rushed down the little tower- 
stair, and flung themselves on the bell-ropes, "jangling" 
the bells in rough mediaeval fashion till the tower shook 
from side to side. And then, as they were tired, came 
the ringers; and the "jangle " died into one of those 
" peals," change after change, which used to cast such 
a spell over my boyhood. 

All was not fun or poetry in these early schooldays. 
The old brutal flogging was still in favour, and the old 

1 Green often told this story about Routh (175 5-1 8 54), and added his words, 
" None of us dared to interrupt the meditations of the great lexicographer." 



I EARLY LIFE 7 

stupid system of forcing boys to learn by rote. I was 
set to learn Latin grammar from a grammar in Latin ! 
and. a flogging every week did little to help me. I was 
simply stupefied, — for my father had never struck me, 
and at first the cane hurt me like a blow, — but the 
" stupid stage " soon came, and I used to fling away 
my grammar into old churchyards, and go up for my 
" spinning " as doggedly as the rest. Everything had 
to be learned by memory, and by memory then, as now, 
I could learn nothing. How I picked up Latin Heaven 
knows ; but somehow I did pick it up, and when we 
got to books where head went for something, I began 
to rise fast among my fellow-schoolboys. But I really 
hated my work, and my mind gained what it gained 
not from my grammars and construing, but from an 
old school library which opened to me pleasures I had 
never dreamed of. " Travels " were the fairyland of 
this time of my life, and I used to forget all my 
" spinnings " in the [company] of Bruce or Marco 
Polo. Now, too, burst on me for the first time the 
charm of fiction — and hour after hour passed away as 
I sate buried in the glories of Ivanhoe or trembling 
over the gloomy mysteries of Sir Sintram. 

Forgive all this loitering over the long years of my 
boyhood. I was but ten as yet ; but the two years 
from eight to ten are as distinct as all before them is 
dim, and in recalling them there is to me, at least, the 
pleasure of one who at last discovers himself. 

The following is from another letter : — 

In this, as in all the other memories of my child- 
hood, I find myself alone. I had no playmates, none 
at least that I can recall. My sisters were seldom at 
home, my brother but a cherry-cheeked infant. Play 
indeed had little charm for me. I was soon tired by a 
run, and too weak and pettish for the rougher horse- 
jokes of stronger boys. A strange mania for reading 
devoured me — I say strange, for the home-store of 
books was a very tiny one and chiefly religious, and the 



8 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Pilgrinis Progress and a ponderous Life of Christ were 
only varied by a few stray numbers, left by some ped- 
lar, of Don fixate. But a stroke of good fortune had 
opened up for me an inexhaustible treasure. 

I may fill up a few details from memoranda pre- 
served by his family and some notes made by himself. 
Green was hardly expected to survive infancy, and was 
from the first fragile and excitable. The delicacy was 
increased by a mistaken attempt to apply a " harden- 
ing " system. His temper was quick, and he some- 
times startled his companions by fits of passion, which, 
however, always passed off without degenerating into 
sulkiness. Various anecdotes indicate his absorption 
in books. He came back from school book in hand, 
and " knocking his head against the lamp-posts." He 
found a quiet corner under the roof of his father's 
house to which he could retire to read. Once he took 
his little sister there and forgot her in his studies. She 
crawled into a dangerous position on the parapet, and was 
rescued by her father, who fainted from the excitement 
and forbade the further use of the retreat. Green was 
sometimes exiled to a garret in which there were some 
books. He found ample consolation in reading, and 
tried to entice his brother to the same source of comfort 
by painting the pictures in Hume's history. He would 
also keep hisbrotherawakeby long stories continued from 
night to night. His brother was sent to another school 
and did not share his tastes, and as his elder sister lived 
elsewhere he was in an isolated position at home. From 
the first, however, he was a great talker when he had a 
chance, delighting in giving out as well as in absorbing 
information. Much of his early knowledge, he used to 
say, was derived from the Penny Journal, books being 
a scarcity in the house. The head-master of his school 



I EARLY LIFE 9 

was attracted by the studious lad, and appointed him 
librarian of a collection of books above the school 
porch. At a very early age Green's reflective powers 
were developed as well as his assimilative. He was 
brought up in a High Church atmosphere, and is said 
to have been especially influenced by a lady who was 
the widow of one of Newman's disciples. When just 
thirteen, he read in a shop window Lord John Russell's 
once famous Durham letter (November 1850) upon the 
" Papal Aggression." He saw the absurdity of the 
agitation, and condemned the abortive persecution of 
the Ecclesiastical Titles Act so vigorously as to incur 
the wrath of his uncle. The uncle forbade the house 
to him, and was only reconciled on condition of future 
silence upon the irritating topic. Green shared, too, 
in the interest excited by Layard's account of the 
Nestorians in the Euphrates Valley. Some one had 
talked to the schoolboys upon the subject, and Green 
went off to Dr. Millard for further information. The 
orthodox mind of Oxford was much exercised by the 
problem whether it could be right to show kindness to 
Monophysites. Dr. Millard, therefore, took the oppor- 
tunity of lecturing his pupil upon the dangers of 
heresy. Green's curiosity was aroused, and he became 
interested in the history of early sects. Some years 
later, having to attend a college examination upon Bible 
history, of which he knew little, he seized an oppor- 
tunity of displaying a wide, though irrelevant know- 
ledge of heresies. He was " deeply humiliated " by 
the examiner's comment, " I should advise you to add 
to your theological learning a knowledge of some of 
the commonest facts of Biblical history." Green's 
studies, however, had been of permanent service to 
him, as he notes, by stimulating his sense of the 
importance of the religious element in history. Mean- 



lo LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

while, his Anglican surroundings had awakened his 
esthetic sensibilities. He was led to the study of 
church architecture. He would hoard up his pence 
till he could accumulate sixpence to pay a sexton for 
admission to a church. " It must," he says, " have 
been an odd sight to see the very Httle boy spending 
all his Saints' Days not in play, but in hunting up 
churches where he might shut himself up to rub 
brasses or to take notes of architecture. I knew a 
great deal about architecture at thirteen. My first 
knowledge of Freeman was when he used to carry 
* little Johnny,' then thirteen years old, on his shoulder 
round Millard's library, because I was so well up in 
mouldings." 

The evils of poverty. Green said, were first impressed 
upon him by a visit of the whole family to London to 
see the Exhibition of 1851. The Greens had to put 
up at a little public-house, and to walk because 
omnibuses were too dear. The landlady, however, 
was attracted by his talk and treated him kindly; and 
besides the Kohinoor (which he thought a " humbug ") 
and the machinery, which delighted him, he was im- 
pressed by the iron shutters on Apsley House, a 
monument to the wickedness of the mob, as his father 
pointed out ; and he even saw the back of the great 
Duke himself. 

The floggings mentioned in the letter were some- 
times severe enough. Green discovered that the cane 
would be inflicted for three bad marks in a week. He 
determined to economise punishment by getting two 
every week. Dr. Millard, discovering this device, 
made an excuse for a third bad mark, and, says Green, 
" What a flogging he gave me, to be sure ! I 
deserved it," he adds magnanimously. His greatest 
triumph at school, he declares, was beguiling a very 



I EARLY LIFE ii 

silent master into " incessant conversation." The 
master was a lover of Spenser, and Green drew him 
out upon this favourite topic. A desire to gain 
information by asking questions was a characteristic 
quality, and was encouraged by his father's constant 
kindness in talking over his school work and discussing 
every interesting topic without affectation of know- 
ledge. Arithmetic seems to have been his great 
trouble at school, and he was " always getting thrashed 
about it." 

A curious incident shows another side of Green's 
mental history, and was connected with an important 
change in his life. He was brought up in a Tory 
circle, and was decorated with a dark-blue rosette on 
election days ; but he inclined to political liberalism 
from early years. He could not himself attribute this 
to any external influence except that of his father, who 
was of the " Peelite " persuasion. Now liberalism, as 
he remarks, goes better with Ritualism than with the 
old-fashioned Anglicanism. The Anglican was for a 
church establishment, and took Charles L and Laud 
for representatives of the cause. A prize having been 
offered for a school essay upon Charles L, Green read 
Hume and such books as he could lay hands upon 
and came to the conclusion that the royal martyr was 
on the wrong side. The examiner. Canon Mozley, 
awarded the prize to Green over the heads of older 
boys, but took occasion to express his disapproval of 
the opinions expressed in the essay. Green, he hoped, 
would change his views as he became older. The head- 
master was more indignant at such a revolt from 
orthodoxy, so indignant, indeed, as Green declares, 
that from this time he resolved to get rid of his pupil. 
He had already been shocked by symptoms of levity. 
He had shown Green a picture of Noah in the Ark, 



12 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

and the boy had audaciously remarked that the patriarch 
looked Hke a " Jack-in-the-Box." Green had now risen 
to be head of the school, and Dr. Millard declared that 
he must be sent to a private tutor. The ways of 
school-masters are sometimes mysterious, but one may 
be permitted to hope that Dr. Millard had other 
reasons besides a horror of premature heresy. It was 
obviously important that the boy should obtain a 
scholarship, and he might be better prepared at a 
private tutor's than in the company of less-advanced 
schoolfellows. 

The decision must have been made just before 
his father's death. Green was sent to Mr. Ridgway 
at Kirkham in Lancashire. He was there left pretty 
much to himself, and the neglect was fortunate. He 
did " all his growing " at this time, and shot up from a 
diminutive size to his full height, which was still much 
below the average. He "wandered about the fields 
thinking," and his thoughts took a remarkable turn. 
He held, as indeed he held through life, to his political 
liberalism, but the alternative to Laudian Anglicanism 
seemed to be, not Puritanism or Rationalism, but 
Catholicism. In his last journey to Lancashire (appar- 
ently in 1853) he fell in with a Catholic priest, and 
announced his intention of joining the Church of Rome 
as soon as his brother Anglicans should be ready to 
accompany him. The priest pointed out the danger 
of delaying till that indefinite period, and Green was 
so much impressed that he informed his uncle of his 
intention of being reconciled to the Catholic Church. 
Exactly a century earlier (1753) Gibbon (b. 1737) had 
taken the same step at the same age. Green's uncle 
treated the case more coolly than Gibbon's father. It 
would be unpleasant for him, he suggested, to be con- 
sidered responsible for his ward's conversion. Green 



I EARLY LIFE 13 

might put off the decisive step till he was of age. The 
boy finally consented to risk his soul a little longer, 
and before the period arrived, his mind had taken a 
different turn. 

Green appears to have kept up friendly relations 
with Mr. Ridgway, but in the autumn of 1853 he was 
transferred to the care of Charles Duke Yonge (1812— 
1 891), afterwards professor at Belfast, and then residing 
at Leamington. Yonge was the author of many educa- 
tional manuals, and at a later time of several historical 
works. He set Green vigorously to work, gave him 
a taste for cl'assical literature, and, finding him ignorant 
of history, put Gibbon into his hands. Green read the 
book from beginning to end. " What a new world 
that was ! " he exclaims. The first initiation into his- 
torical studies roused an enthusiasm which was presently 
to undergo a temporary eclipse. Meanwhile he was 
happy at Leamington, where he had opportunities for 
talking, for hearing music, and even for juvenile love- 
making. In 1854 his tutor sent him up to compete 
for an open scholarship at Jesus College, Oxford. The 
intention was merely to give him practice in the art 
of examination. Green unexpectedly won the scholar- 
ship. He was too young to go into residence for a 
year, but at his uncle's desire he decided to accept 
his election, and apparently remained at Oxford in 
the interval. He was matriculated December 7, 

1855- 

Green's intellectual brightness was already conspic- 
uous, and it might have been expected that with his 
equally remarkable gifts for social intercourse he would 
have become familiar with his most promising contem- 
poraries. There was certainly no lack of brilliant young 
men in the Oxford of those days, and intercourse with 
clever lads of the same age is often the best part of 



14 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

university education. Green, however, remained in a 
position of comparative isolation. He formed a valu- 
able friendship with Mr., now Professor, Boyd Dawkins, 
who entered Jesus College in 1857, but he had not a 
large circle of friends. The college at the time was 
almost entirely filled by Welshmen, who saw little of 
out-college men ; and its members were not distin- 
guished in the schools. Green certainly retained a very 
painful impression of his undergraduate career, and, 
though in later years he could recognise some of the 
charm of the Oxford atmosphere, did not change his 
opinion of the college circle of his own day. Professor 
Dawkins indeed says that Green had some acquaintances 
outside of his own college, but adds that his merits 
were nowhere fully appreciated. His conversation was 
already brilliant, and he had a far wider and more varied 
knowledge than most undergraduates. His interests, 
however, lay outside the regular field of university 
study, and he took a dislike to the dry and narrow 
system then dominant at Oxford. History, in which he 
might have distinguished himself, was associated with 
law, which he regarded with aversion. A deeper reason 
for disgust with the system impressed itself upon him. 
When selected fragments of different books were pre- 
scribed by his tutors, he refused to submit ; feeling 
that the study of history was degraded when the 
student was forced to confine himself to the fragments 
of knowledge which would " pay " in the schools, 
instead of pursuing wider inquiries for their own sake. 
When he was about to take his degree, however, the 
college tutor put his name down for modern history. 
He at once withdrew it, and substituted physical science. 
He got up the necessary scientific knowledge in the short 
interval before the examination. He could pass with- 
out trouble in classical subjects, and only just succeeded 



I EARLY LIFE 15 

in October 1859 In escaping of malice prepense the 
compliment of an " honorary fourth." ^ 

Green's position in the college was affected by another 
significant circumstance. He joined a small club which 
discussed literary topics. A satire called the " Gentiad," 
printed in 1857, was produced by this body. It echoes 
the " Dunciad," and begins by an invocation of Pope's 
muse. 

Mute is the lyre that moved of old the rage 
And scourged the rampant follies of the age ; 
Hushed is the voice v^^hose one satiric word 
Pierced ten times deeper than the keenest sword ; 
And, see ! e'er yet its echoes faint are hushed 
Start into life the vices it had crushed. 
Oh wake once more, satiric harp ; too long 
Have ninnies gloried in thy silenced song ! 

The bard proceeds to apply his lash to members of 
Jesus College. The efficiency of the satire could not 
be estimated without an explanation of allusions now 
much in need of a learned commentator. The sharpest 
personal attacks were inserted by other members of 
the club; but Green was taken to be the author of 
the whole, and was too proud to disavow the responsi- 
bility. Ingenuous youth shrinks from familiarity with 
a man possessed of so dangerous a talent, and Green 
was more or less excluded from the college society. 
The tutors, meanwhile, thought him an able but idle 
man who, from some inscrutable reason, was too way- 
ward to accept the prescribed course of study. Though 
indifferent to academical distinctions. Green's intellect 
was anything but idle. He was reading as his fancy 
led, and at this time was especially interested in the 
English literature from the time of his model Pope. 

1 Green's rooms were upon the " first staircase on the right, entering the second 
quadrangle — next the Principal's house in the corner, and on the second floor on 
the left (right as one ascends the stairs)." 



i6 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Among his favourites were Addison, Steele, Gibbon, and 
Macaulay. For Lamb and Thackeray he professed a 
sentiment of personal affection ; and, as may be inferred 
from the lines just quoted, he was able to adopt the 
style which he admired. Meanwhile the early enthusi- 
asm for historical reading was more or less in abey- 
ance, though incidentally it would seem his literary 
studies led him to pick up a good deal of historical 
anecdote. 

One incident of this time had an important influence 
in rousing Green to a more hopeful state of mind. 
During his university career Arthur Penrhyn Stanley was 
professor of ecclesiastical history. Green, during his 
last term, went accidentally into the lecture-room 
where Stanley was discoursing upon the Wesleys. The 
lecture fascinated him, and he never missed another. In 
one lecture, Stanley concluded with the phrase, " Magna 
est Veritas et ■pravalebit^ words so great that I could 
almost prefer them to the motto of our own university, 
Dominus Illuminatio mea." As Stanley left the room 
Green, who had been deeply interested, exclaimed, 
" Magna est Veritas et pr^evalebit is the motto of the 
town ! " Stanley was much pleased, invited his young 
admirer to walk home with him, and asked him to 
dinner. The day appointed was early in November 
(1859), ^^"^ ^^^ "town and gown" riots of the period 
made the passage through the streets rather hazardous. 
" How could you come at all ? " asked Stanley. "Sir," 
replied Green in the words of Johnson, "it is a great 
thing to dine with the Canons of Christ Church." A 
canonry of Christ Church was annexed to Stanley's 
professorship. A warm friendship sprang up, and the 
effect produced upon Green may be best given from a 
letter written a little later. In December 1863 Stanley 
was about to marry Lady Augusta Bruce, and to become 



I EARLY LIFE 17 

Dean of Westminster. Green, then a London clergy- 
man, wrote to congratulate him. 



To A. P. Stanley 

2 Victoria Gardens, Ladbroke Road, 
NoTTiNG Hill, W., 

December 1863. 

My dear Dr. Stanley — I have only now learnt 
from Oakley your direction, or I should have ventured 
before to offer my congratulations on your marriage. 
No one can wish you more happiness than I, to whom 
you have been the cause of so much. 

I have often longed, in the midst of my work, his- 
torical or clerical, to tell you how wholly that work, 
and the happiness that comes of it, is owing to you. I 
am glad I delayed till now, till the close of your Oxford 
teaching, that you may at least know what your teach- 
ing has done for one Oxford man out of the many that 
you taught. 

I came up to Oxford a hard reader and a passionate 
High Churchman — two years of residence left me idle 
and irreligious. Partly from ill-health, partly from 
disgust at my college, I had cut myself off from society 
within or without it. I rebelled doggedly against the 
systems around me. I would not work, because work 
was the Oxford virtue. I tore myself from history 
which I loved, and plunged into the trifles of archaeology, 
because they had no place in the university course. 

1 remember, that in the absolute need I felt of some 
reading, and my resolve to read nothing that could 
possibly bring me in contact with what Oxford valued, 
1 spent a year over the literature of the eighteenth 
century, and especially the vexed questions in the life 
of Pope ! 

Of course, all this seems now absurd as a sick 
man's dream ; but absurd as it was, it was the life I 
had deliberately chosen, and was doggedly carrying out, 
when accident brought me to your lecture-room. 



i8 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

It was the same with religion. High Churchism fell 
with a great crash and left nothing behind — nothing 
but a vague reverence for goodness, however narrow 
and bigoted in form, which kept me as far from the 
shallow of the current Oxford liberalism as I had 
already drifted from the Mansel-orthodoxy. 

I saw only religious parties unjust to one another as 
I stood apart, unjust to them all. 

I had withdrawn myself from Oxford work, and 1 
found no help in Oxford theology. 

I was utterly miserable when I wandered into your 
lecture-room, and my recollection of what followed 
is not so much of any definite words as of a great 
unburthening. Then and after I heard you speak of 
work, not as a thing of classes and fellowships, but as 
something worthy for its own sake, worthy because it 
made us like the great worker. 

That sermon on work was like a revelation to me. 
" If you cannot or will not work at the work which 
Oxford gives you, at any rate work at something." I 
took up my old boy-dreams, — history — I think I 
have been a steady worker ever since. And so in 
religion, it was not so much a creed that you taught 
me as fairness. 

You were liberal, you pointed forward, you believed 
in a future as other "liberals" did, but you were not 
like them, unjust to the present or the past. I found 
that old vague reverence of mine for personal goodness 
which alone remained to me, widened in your teaching 
into a live catholicity. I used to think as I left your 
lecture-room of how many different faiths and persons 
you had spoken, and how you had revealed and taught 
me to love the good that was in them all. 

I cannot tell you how that great principle of fairness 
has helped me since, — how in my reading it has helped 
me out of partisanship and mere hero-worship, — how 
in my parish it used to disclose to me the real 
sterling worth of obstructive churchwardens or med- 
dling committee-men. 



I EARLY LIFE 19 

But it has helped me most of all in my realisation 
of the church, that church of all men and all things, 
" working together for good," drawn on through error 
and ignorance by and to Him who is wisdom and 
truth. 

I have said much more than I purposed, and yet 
much less than I might say. 

Ofcourse there were other influences — Carlyle helped 
me to work — above all, Montaigne helped me to fair- 
ness. But the personal impression of a living man must 
always be greater and more vivid than those of books. 

I only pray that in your new sphere you may be to 
others what in your old you were to me. — Believe me, 
dear Dr. Stanley, faithfully yours, J. R. Green. 

In his last year of residence (1859) Green's historical 
powers were shown by a very remarkable performance. 
The proprietors of the Oxford Chronicle had published 
a series of articles upon "Oxford in the Last Century." 
They complain ^ that they could not obtain access to 
the city archives. The consequence was that the series 
threatened to " degenerate into a mere dull summary 
of petty and uninteresting events." It does not seem 
to be obvious that the dulness — which is undeniable 
— would have been remedied by use of city archives. 
Anyhow they changed the scheme, and resolved to 
" depict in as lively a manner as possible the life of 
times which were so fast passing away from us." The 
execution of this task was fortunately entrusted to 
Green. The plan may probably have been suggested 
by him. A country newspaper was singularly fortunate 
in gaining so efficient a contributor. If his intellect 
had not reached full maturity, he gives unmistakable 
proofs of the power afterwards revealed. His descrip- 

1 I quote from a preface to the two series, which were issued together in 1859. 
They are anpnymous, but Green's authorship of the second is unmistakable. The 
papers are about to be republished. 



20 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

tions of the old Oxford with its Jacobite dons, its 
soHd and corrupt aldermen, its wild undergraduates, 
and its circumambient highwaymen, show his charac- 
teristic gifts. Probably the scheme of a lively picture 
may have been suggested by the famous chapter in 
Macaulay's second volume, which every one was then 
reading. Green in any case shows the first indication 
of his keen appreciation of the importance of the history 
of towns. Incidentally he also displays wide reading 
not only of Oxford antiquaries and of such local litera- 
ture as Amhurst's Terra Filius^ but of the great English 
authors of the period. It is strange, though it is doubt- 
less true, that some boys brought up at Oxford do not 
acquire a taste for history. Oxford had at last a native 
citizen thoroughly susceptible to the influences of his 
environment. Whatever his views may have been as 
to the Mercians, he was profoundly fascinated by the 
traditions of the ancient city. Green was planning 
further papers, but was discouraged at the time by 
finding that the editor of the paper wanted no more 
work of the kind. In September he had made a fly- 
ing visit to Ireland. He saw something of the religious 
" revival " at Belfast, which was then interesting the 
religious world, and wrote a careful account of his 
impressions, which was returned with thanks by a 
magazine. He threw it aside with bitter disappoint- 
ment. Years afterwards he looked at it again and 
found that it had never been opened. 

Green was now choosing a profession. His uncle, 
says Professor Dawkins, would have been willing to 
send him to the Bar. For that profession he had no 
doubt some decided qualifications, though the weak- 
ness of his health would have been against it. He 
was, it seems, prejudiced rather against than in favour 
of the proposal, by its coming with authority. He 



I EARLY LIFE 21 

had begun the study but found it repulsive, and 
literature seemed to be hopeless as a support. A 
diary kept at this time illustrates his state of mind. 
Besides little incidents of the day, remarks upon 
his acquaintances and references to his reading (he 
speaks of Rabelais, Montaigne, Burton, Dante, and 
Sartor Resartus)^ he considers his position and pros- 
pects. In spite of his pass degree he declares — " though 
he is probably the only one to think so" — that his career 
has been a successful one. " These four years have 
been the Medea's kettle from whence I came out re- 
newed. Oh! how I laugh at myself as I came up — 
that little restless animal in black, covetous of applause, 
of society, of ambition, and only hesitating whether my 
choice should make me a Pitt or a Fox ; prating of 
Love with the self-conscious air of an expert ; sharp, 
sarcastic, bustling, pressing to the front, — and now ! " 
Now, he has learnt to know himself — the limits of his 
powers and the secret of his own character. He thinks 
that he can " bear good fortune without pride, and ill- 
luck without bitterness." The practical application 
appears to be that he will choose a Hfe that will let him 
" hide in his study," and yet " gain a quiet name." As 
a clergyman he may gain an income sufficient for inde- 
pendence, and be able to write what he pleases without 
being " driven to toadyism or hackwork." He had 
already made a plan for a history of the Church of 
England, into which, as he notes in his diary, a previous 
plan for writing the lives of the Archbishops had de- 
veloped. At this time, too, he was being attracted by 
the teaching of F. D. Maurice, and at last, in what he 
calls " a fit of religious enthusiasm," he decided to take 
orders. The " fit," it must be added, seems to have 
been very -genuine and lasting. Meanwhile he had some 
time to pass before reaching the canonical age for ordina- 



22 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

tion. Part of the time in the winter of 1859-60 was 
spent at Theale, a village in Somersetshire. His friend 
Dawkins took lodgings there in the parsonage, where 
Green with two or three of his companions joined him. 
They appear to have had a very good time. Green 
acted partly as " coach " to Dawkins, who was preparing 
for his degree. Dawkins repaid this service by rousing 
Green's interest in geology. Dawkins had already 
begun to explore Wookey Hole, not far from Theale, 
and to unearth rehcs of prehistoric man whose exist- 
ence had recently been made known by similar dis- 
coveries on the Continent. Green joined in these 
explorations. He was also then persuaded by Dawkins 
to attend Professor Phillips's lectures on geology. He 
read Lyell, Murchison, Hugh Miller, and Buckland ; 
and he was profoundly interested by the early Darwinian 
controversies. Green's interest in these matters was 
connected with an interest in physical geography. His 
singular power, in spite of his shortsightedness, of taking 
in the main features of scenery and tracing their effect 
upon the historical development of races and nations, was 
strengthened by his geological observations. Meanwhile 
the little party at Theale had other interests. Green took 
part in the work of the parish, especially in training the 
village choir, and saw something of the natives. There 
was even a temporary marriage engagement, which 
fortunately came to an end on the speedy discovery 
of a want of any really deep congeniality. An incident 
of Green's examination for orders at the end of this 
period is characteristic both of him and of Stanley. 
He flatly refused to read Paley's Evidences, even at 
the cost of rejection, because, he said, the argument 
was out of date. The Bishop of London (Tait) had 
expressly mentioned Paley in his letter to Stanley, the 
examining chaplain. Stanley ingeniously remarked 



I EARLY LIFE 23 

that as the Evidences was not expressly mentioned, 
Green might take up the Hor^ Paulina. On the 
final examination this produced a difficulty, and an 
appeal had to be made to the bishop. Green was 
summoned to an interview and told the whole story. 
" Oh Stanley, Stanley ! " cried the bishop, and sent 
Green back. He never read the Evidences nor Pearson 
on The Creed, to which he had also objected. Green 
stayed at Fulham Palace for a time, and notes in his 
diary that the bishop " has been hospitality itself — 
unpretentious, full of honest fun, but always open and 
sincere. His charge embodied all my feelings on 
charity towards others in the Church and without it. 
They were noble words — not soon, by God's grace, to 
be forgotten." 

I now give some early letters which may be suffi- 
ciently understood by reference to these statements. 
One remark may be premised. Green preserved copies 
of some letters from which I make extracts. It is 
plain that they are not simply intended for his corre- 
spondence, but were also exercises in composition. He 
is thinking of Addison and Charles Lamb, and indulg- 
ing in literary airs and graces with the ambition of a 
youthful aspirant to authorship. Allowance must, there- 
fore, be made for a certain artificiality which was soon 
to be replaced by the thoroughly spontaneous character 
of his later correspondence. 



T'o the Rev. J. Ridgway 

August 1858. 

[Green describes himself as " sitting over Charles 
Lamb or Dryden in his study," or " wandering down 
to Tenby to pick up gelatinous sea-anemones, jolt over 
the sand in bathing-machines, or philosophise on the 
manners and customs of an English coffee-room."] 



24 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

For I must confess that as modern ideas go I am 
but an indifferent traveller. I have a greater love for 
Addison than for Ruskin, and take a far greater interest 
in a character than in a landscape. Nowadays, I believe, 
were a tourist to stray down to the Coverley estate, he 
would stroll, guide-book in hand, through the haunted 
grove and would scarce spare a nod tor Sir Roger. 
I fell into talk with an intelligent and gentlemanly 
Yankee I met by chance a few days back, and after 
listening to his rapturous descriptions of the lakes and 
mountains of Wales, I asked him what he thought of 
its people. " People ! eh ! oh ! very curious, very ; 
their women wear hats." For my part, nothing struck 
me more in the Celtic race, especially in the southern 
part of Wales, than its Ishmaelitish character. Every 
man's hand is against his fellow, and his fellow's against 
him. They recall the Europe of the Middle Ages ; 
their normal condition is that of war, however inter- 
rupted by occasional truces. They are impulsively 
generous and quarrelsome ; they take but an hour to 
become warm friends, and but a moment to change to 
implacable foes. Ever thirsty for excitement, they rush 
from the conventicle to the beer-shop, and from the 
beer-shop back to the conventicle. Their pulpit-orators 
roar sinners into repentance and women into convul- 
sions. The only time they do not live in is the present 
— they cling with a passionate tenacity to the language 
and traditions of the past — they grasp with an equally 
passionate energy at the railroads and mines that are to 
make up the greatness of their future. 



To T. O. 

1858, 

I have long had a standing quarrel with proverbs. 
They are the half-truths that Pedantry, that utterer of 
base coin, would pass on the world for universal verities. 
Stuff! Universal truth is as unattainable as an universal 
language. " Bah ! " means the most different thing in 



I EARLY LIFE 25 

the world in a man and in a sheep. " Early to bed 
and early to rise," is to J. B. the sagest of maxims ; to 
me the most shameless of lies. But of all trenchant, 
impudent, non-verities commend me to your " No news 
is good news." There is something astounding in the 
very recklessness of its assumption. It is as if corre- 
spondence were a communion solely of misery and woe, 

— as if we had only recourse to a friend as to a money- 
lender when we were going to the dogs, — as if we were 
selfish of our happiness and generous of our misfortunes, 

— as if the Post Office were a house of mourning and 
our letters deHvered in black-edged envelopes by under- 
takers instead of postmen. It is as though every man 
ran prating to all the world of his mishaps, — as if our 
Agamemnons had no mantle to hide their faces in, but 
must blubber out their woes on double-prest notepaper, 

— as if he knew nothing of that divine gift of silence, — 
as if all were parrots with an everlasting " Poor Poll." 
I am sure this proverb was minted by a doctor or a 
nurse. There is something of the " it might have been 
worse" philosophy in it. It has an indefinable smack of 
Mrs. Gamp. 'Tis an ill end to the friendship of Pylades 
and Orestes — this slap in the face from Orestes. 

And, pray, how am I ? I am reading for fun, that 
is, not for the class list, dread Moloch of Oxford 
innocents ; scribbling alternately love-letters, satires, and 
romances^; flirting at fishing-parties, raking at fairs, 
sentimentalising no matter where ; seeing the salmon 
leap out of the Wye, and the children sand-digging at 
Tenby ; going mad beneath the howling of gospel- 
preachers in South Wales, and saved from insanity by 
a glance at K. J. 

To M. M. 

1858. 

[He has accepted an invitation to a fishing-party in 
order that he may " fling himself into the thick of the 
fun."] 

^ In his notebooks at this time, amidst various historical references, are sketches 
of two stories. 



i6 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Now a fishing-party has always seemed the chiefest 
of bores ; angHng may have its charms, its quietude of 
contemplation and repose of mind ; romping may have 
its allurements, its riotous movement and joyous girl- 
giggles, but the combination of the two is like the 
mixture of oil and water, shake them as you will, 'tis 
impossible to unite them. 

Once disembarked from our dogcart, I stole quietly 
to the slow oily stream, beneath whose willows lurked 
scores of fat, podgy perch, and long hungry pike. But 
my anticipations were soon fulfilled. A gentle " bob," 
a slight quiver of the float ; he's certainly nibbling 
methought. When " Please," cries a laughing voice at 
my elbow, " can you put on a bait for me ? " To do 
this, one must turn and look in the suppliant's face, 
which assumes so rueful and penitent an expression, 
that anger is impossible. You bait the hook and adjust 
the line which is long enough to form an electric cable 
along the muddy river bottom, when, oh gratitude ! oh 
sober contemplation of angling ! your straw is suddenly 
snatched from your head, and the fair penitent is 
scudding across the meadows with her spolia opima. 
Fishing is over for the day, there are the servants draw- 
ing up the set lines and filling their baskets with their 
finny captives ; but your float may bob away till 
doomsday unperceived, while its owner is chasing coy 
fugitives along the grassy meadow, perchance to win hat 
and kiss at once, perchance to see the exulting robber 
look saucy defiance from that impregnable stronghold 
of propriety, where the mothers and aunts sit chatting 
under the big elmshade. Really, I found myself 
enjoying this " chiefest of bores." I began to think 
that the "accursed regimen of women," as John Knox 
loved to style it, might not be so very accursed after 
all. " You'll dance to-night of course," laughs a 
hoyden of eighteen, as I sat lazily apart. " 1 never 
dance ; " and off she whirls in a pet. "You dance to- 
night of course," titters a damsel of twenty summers. 
" I'm afraid I'm quite ignorant of the art." The man 



I EARLY LIFE 27 

that hesitates is lost. A dozen instructors are instantly 
at hand, and in another minute I am in the thick of 
quadrilles and waltzes. " Two," saw the dance re- 
luctantly cease, and all drove home through the elms 
of Kiddlington, dark, looming through the thick night. 
I owned to myself that I had not spent so happy or so 
unphilosophical an evening for years. 1 had not the 
conscience to return home at such an hour, so spent 
my night at a friend's house just out of Oxford. I 
awoke determined to have as thoughtless and happy 
a day as 1 had just enjoyed. Not to weary you, I 
accomplished my purpose by trotting about with my 
friend after- birds all the morning, and petting his little 
children till night. I was by turns their horse, hen- 
house builder, and their drawing-master, though in the 
latter capacity my lessons went no further than the 
human face divine, which is conveyed by a circle 
surrounding two dots for the eyes, a smudge for the 
nose, and a line for the mouth. 

From the end of the letter it appears that the 
appearance of Miss J., probably the K. J., a glance at 
whom saved him from madness, reminds him of a 
picture of Gretchen in Faust. It is not her beauty, 
though she is beautiful, but " the inexpressible purity 
and delicacy of her expression. There was a dove-like, 
guileless repose about her, whose religious tone singu- 
larly harmonised with the time and place in which I first 
saw her. It was with that charmed yet passionless fancy 
with which one would gaze at a saint or a Madonna, 
that I gazed on Miss J." 

To B. 

1859. 

I was excessively glad to hear from D. on his return 
that he had found you in possession of my old rooms. 
I am not one of those who have strong local attach- 



28 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

merits : who " strike root downwards " (which perhaps 
accounts for my not "bearing fruit upwards"); but 
still as one parts from a place one becomes conscious 
that one leaves a part of the ego behind one, and does 
not wish even this shadowy remnant of oneself to be 
insulted by the invasion of a cad. There are some 
sunny memories, too, connected with those old rooms 
of mine, which such an inroad would trample on ; hours 
of poring over musty old chronicles while the clocks 
chimed the hours after midnight ; of lounges all the 
long summer afternoons on the old sofa over Ariosto or 
Ra-pe of the Lock; of pacings round and round the room. 
Pope's Homer in hand, chanting out the lines which, 
criticise them as you will, have got a ring of old Homer 
in them. Eheu 1 I would rather burn my old suit than 
have it worn by a Welshman pur et simple. 

" I hate all the world," said Swift; "but I love Jack, 
Tom, and Harry." My feelings towards Welshmen 
are something like Swift's towards mankind; but I, too, 
have my Jack, Tom, and Harry exceptions from the 
general Sodom and Gomorrah doom. And I know no 
Elisha on whom I would rather have my mantle fall 
than on yourself. En passant^ I am glad, my dear 
Elisha, that you have as little as possible to do with the 
Baal worshippers ; that you hold yourself " like a star 
apart" from the Vulgus of the two Quads. I wish I had 
been as wise or as fortunate (for who can tell how much 
luck there is in wisdom or what difference exists 
between wisdom and luck ?). I fought the ol ttoXXoC 
and got befooled in the encounter as I deserved. 
Always "hit a man your own size," B. You honour a 
man, I think, by condescending to an encounter, even 
though you trounce him, not that it is so certain that 
the best man should come off victor in these engage- 
ments. The Vulgus, whether Welshman or Polyne- 
sian, always reminds me of Coleridge's description of 
Frenchmen. "They are like gunpowder: each grain 
by itself is contemptible, but mass them and they are 
terrible indeed." 



I EARLY LIFE 29 

Pardon my egotism. Were I ever so great a 
traveller, I should find the ego a world large enough 
to be all my life travelling and exploring. 

To W. B. Dawkins 

13 High Street, Oxford, 
Friday, July 25, 1859. 

[This letter refers to the papers contributed to the 
Oxford Chronicle.^ 

I am so fagged with work, my dear Dawkins, that I 
am going to fling myself upon this paper (and upon 
your mercies) just as one flings oneself down on a 
grassy lawn and counts the clouds sailing past along 
the blue — in short, I am going to divert myself in as 
fantastic a manner as I please, and if you look for 
order, sobriety, regularity, arrangement, then — burn 
this letter. 

But what am I so fagged about ? Not about Aris- 
totle, ethics, logic, metaphysics. Trust me, their dust 
has been undisturbed till this morning when, counting 
on my love of slumber, one of our maids has been mak- 
ing a razzia in my study, and stirred up every atom 
that would have settled down as undisturbed as the 
ashes that entomb Pompeii into a very noxious activity 
— not these, stone-cracker mine — but work that I like 
and enjoy and revel in, work that tempts me to show 
myself that Samson's locks are not yet quite shorn, that 
the power of fag has not yet quite gone out of me, work, 
Anectodico — Historico — Antiquarian. These are 
my titles in future, I doubt which will look the nobler, 
Dr. Dawkins, F.R.S., F.G.S. or J. R. Green Esq., 
A.H.A. Pshaw! it looks provokingly ridiculous — ■ 
Oh, D., I wish you could see my extemporised 
study ; the reading-table standing like the peak 
of Tenerifi^e out of the midst of a very sea of books, 
papers, notes, extracts, memorandums, pens in all stages 
of crushableness, paper in all degrees.of rumble-ification ; 



30 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

but TenerifFe itself being surmounted by a pyramid of 
antiquarianism, Anthony a Wood, Gutch, Aubrey, 
Peshall — a pyramid with a hole in its side just big 
enough for a clean sheet and a busy pen that goes 
merrily " scratch, scratch " through the livelong day. 
Each paper consists of four sheets, and I hope by the 
end of the week to have finished about ten, and to be 
master of my earnings, "earnings " (doesn't the word 
ring again ?) to the extent of as many guineas. And 
then the stores of miscellaneous information I am 
gathering into that olla-podrida of a brain of mine, 
the numberless little facts that will all coin down into 
money, fresh new sovereigns with a golden chink. — for 
as to fame I begin to despise that with the class list. 
No — a fig for fame — a cosy vicarage, a heap of books, 
a good pen and a deluge of paper, and I could be as 
happy as a king. I have been asked twenty times in as 
many days, "John, John, when will you be serious ? " 
Never. I have thrown my last chance away ; I had an 
invitation the other day which I could hardly refuse, to 
join in a water picnic-party with some whom I knew to 
be " serious people." I went and found some fifty, 
forty of whom were in the same predicament as your 
humble servant, — they knew the hostess but they knew 
not one another. It was thought too " serious a matter " 
to introduce such a number, and they were themselves 
too serious to shake down into acquaintance. I went up 
to one who looked the least serious, and was bored for 
an hour with the rifle-corps, and the designs of 
I'Empereur. I was seized on by another who gave me 
the whole detail of paper-making, apropos of a paper 
mill which we passed, till I stumped him on a question 
which I had got up among my odds and ends — the 
paper duties — drawbacks, and the like. I fled to the 
ladies and secured such a serious companion that I was 
forced, in self-defence, to get rid of her by declaring 
(horribile dictu) my love for the stage. What marvel 
that a young ensign who accompanied us was driven to 
drink and inebriation, what wonder that I, the most 



I EARLY LIFE 31 

staid of personages, when once I did meet with a 
" worldly " demoiselle, flirted with her incessantly all 
the way home, to the scandal of every "proper" person 
in the company. No ! I won't be serious ; I can be 
gloomy, blue-devilish, petulant, sulky, but 1 can't be 
serious. When I am " heavenly minded " I must 
laugh. I believe the time when I am most " good " is 
the time when I am tossing about some little tiny 
prattlers that have been long looking out for " On 
Green " and the sweets in his pockets, and laughing at 
their little chatter and rippling little chuckles. 

Do you like singing, Dawkins ? Do you like it, 
love it, adore it ? I have been listening to a voice 
lately that forced me to think in how many hours I 
could be sung into a declaration. Ah, sweet Circean 
gift of song, truly should he be bound, as I am, to the 
mast and drifting over a pathless sea, who would listen 
to your strains and yet remain unenslaved. But since I 
could not fly Circe herself has fled; she was but a visitor, 
a "wandering voice " as Wordsworth sings. Positively, 
D., though for a year or so I have been chanting to 
myself like a cuckoo " old bachelor, old bachelor," I 
believe I shall end in marriage, — and with whom ? I 
have not settled on the individual, but I can tell you the 
species. Not the beautiful — your Junos, Minervas, or 
Venus's — but some quiet, demure little party whose 
beauty at the best will be that of expression ; who won't 
mind pets, humours, and eccentricities; who will never 
invade my study or pop in on my musings with some 
vapid suggestion to visit the Blinks's or some bothering 
inquiry about papering and painting. Some one who 
won't talk of her love, or expect demonstrations in 
return, but whose love will be like sunshine, cheering 
and warming and comforting, and lighting up all the 
dark corners of one's morbid temperament. Some one 
who can decipher my horrible scrawl and copy my 
manuscripts for the printer. Some one who can pet our 
little ones without spoiling them, who will care for me 
without overcaring for me, who will be charitable with- 



32 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

out any anxiety for niggers at Timbuctoo; and good 
without confession twice a week or working slippers for 
some " dear " curate. Some one who can play without 
being constantly strumming; who can paint without 
having her fingers always smudgy ; who can contrive a 
good dinner and yet not degenerate into a mere house- 
keeper. Ah ! vanitas vanitatum^ lady of my dream, 
unfindable among human flesh and blood, remind 
Dawkins of his promise, and bid him good-bye from 
his friend, J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

13 High Street, Oxford. 

My DEAR Dawkins — I should, I fear, have wholly 
forgotten my promise to you had I not been reminded 
of it by an incident which recalled to my memory your 
pertinacious theories on the distinction or confusion 
between Instinct and Reason. 

On returning home, I found a room for the time 
unoccupied and unfurnished. My brother and I, by 
begging sundry chairs and tables, have managed to 
make ourselves a very rough but comfortable study, 
where no intruding relative or slavey may, under pain 
of a shower of books, chessboard, desk, and ink-bottle, 
venture to intrude. From the window of this sanctum 
I gain a view, which, if it cannot vie with your country 
landscape in freshness and colouring, is far their superior 
in variety and interest. In my front the prospect is 
bounded by the long reach of Jesus, where now no 
chimneys smoke and vacant scouts lounge idly through 
the Quad — no bell tingles — sad harbinger of compul- 
sory chapel — from the small belfry which is right before 
me or the bell turret of Balliol which peeps over the 
intervening roof. Farther to my right a picturesque 
chestnut hides Exeter, but through a gap in it I see the 
unslated rafters of the new chapel. Thence from the 
Temple, or whatever is the name of that queerest of 
buildings which surmounts the theatre, my eye wanders 



I EARLY LIFE 33 

along a wilderness of pinnacles which mark the site 
of the schools to the towering dome of the RadclifFe ; 
while, through an interval in the surrounding buildings, 
I catch a glimpse of one of those peculiar towers of All 
Souls, which Sir Christopher seems to have built in a 
fancy for square telescopes inverted. 

But not to digress further — the main prospect from 
my window consists of no less picturesque an object 
than the market roof, with its long ridge of slates, its 
leaden gutters, its glass skylight, its spouts descending 
earthward, and its chimneys towering to the sky. There 
bask in a pleasant and sunlit solitude the interesting 
creatures, whose habits and customs I have of late been 
observing with a view to the solution of that tangled 
question, " Have animals reason or not ? " 

No sooner has my first nap commenced than my 
ear, which grows more and more acute as my eyes grow 
duller, catches a faint mew, answered by a series of 
similar noises from distant quarters. As the animals, in 
obedience to the signal, approach nearer to each other, 
the cries grow louder and louder, till, uniting in as close 
proximity as possible to my bedroom window, they set 
up a ceaseless anthem of squeals, mews, shrieks, squalls; 
in fact, a thousand different noises which no dictionary 
has yet given equivalents for. When wearied of this 
diversion a solitary snarl gives the signal for other sport, 
which comprises an equal variety of equally horrible 
sounds, till, after half an hour's uninterrupted discord, 
they consent to retire, save, perhaps, some vindictive 
old tabby who shrieks alone for another hour or so. 
I won't weary you with a picture of my agonies as I lie 
tossing and writhing, my fingers in my ears, yet unable 
to exclude a single note of this diabolical caterwauling. 
Oftentimes, unable to bear it, I start from the sheets, 
seize some destructive missile and throw up the window 
— only to behold my foes sitting in conscious security 
on a skylight. I have, indeed, some hope yet of re- 
venge, as I am in communication with the Market 



34 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Commissioners for permission, under these circum- 
stances, to smash a skylight or so ; but, till leave is 
obtained, I must endure these midnight tortures with- 
out hope of prevention or alleviation. 

You will naturally inquire what could be the cause 
of all this. My brother laughs and says it is the usual 
mode of feline wooing; my guardian has a theory that 
it is a way they have of fighting ; but reasoning on the 
subject by the help of your suggestions, I have found 
no difficulty in tracing it to revenge. These cats have 
learnt my hostility to, and persecution of, their race ; 
the drowned kittens and deceased cats are no doubt 
laid at my door ; they have determined on exacting a 
terrible vengeance, and have laid their plots with all 
that cunning which they display even in meaner objects, 
on stealing a mutton chop, or licking up the cream. 

The problem is to my mind solved. Instinct never 
could guide them through the intricacies of so vile a con- 
spiracy — no! nothing short of a hypothetical Syllogism 
could have suggested the device of squatting on the 
glass skylight. Henceforth your investigations may lie 
in a more domestic quarter; let dogs and cows — the 
present subjects of your study — wander unobserved, 
but base your theory and found your fame upon cats. . . . 
— Yours affectionately, J. R. Green. 

Diary 

[Green went to Dublin early in September; and in 
his diary describes a visit to St. Patrick's, where he 
heard stories about Swift from a verger ; and thence 
to Rosstrevor. Next day, he says] " We whisked 
through a tract of English landscape to Dundalk ; and 
were driven by a civil, dare-devil, gambling scamp into 
some of the most delicious scenery in the world. We 
swept round the backs of the hills into a country of bogs 
and rocks, where the turf piles lay like brown dots 
around, and the stone walls cut up every field into 
infinitesimal portions. Miserable as the system is, it 



I EARLY LIFE 3s 

gives life to the landscape that I never observed else- 
where ; there are none of those reaches of field upon 
field, those long sweeps of crops or meadow, without 
sign of man or man's dwelling-place, that often give me 
a sense of almost painful loneliness in the midst of an 
English landscape. Every field has its little hut, its 
potato-garden close hugging it, and some pig or boy 
crawling about its door. Up through Lord Clare- 
mont's park into the hills, all the vale of Newry bursts 
on it with its hills sweeping in the background to 
the sea on the one hand, far away landward on the 
other ; the lower ridges with the pines thick-climbing 
up from the river beneath. A trick of the driver's 
betrayed us into a long pull across to Rosstrevor, the 
livelier for the chat of the two boys who pulled us; one, 
the elder and graver of eighteen, the other a brown- 
cheeked, quick-eyed Milesian of fifteen. The boy was 
full of the sea, — of the vessels that put in for Newry, 
of the Greek corn-brig "with all the crew in petticoats," 
but above all of the heroism of Captain Kelly, who had 
lately lost his life on the coast in attempting to bring 
the crew off a wreck. Her boat was swamped, his 
accoutrements were too heavy for him ; " he just put 
up his hands and said 'Good-bye, boys,' and went down, 
sir." Ah! if we have no Homeridae and no epics to 
chaunt, if our ballads are no longer sung in market and 
hall, — we have still our hero-songs of the sea, and 
bright-eyed boys to chaunt them. 

[On Sunday, Green heard a prosy sermon, and 
remarks that the prayer for the Lord Lieutenant, "that 
he may wield the sword committed to his hand by Her 
Most Gracious Majesty," is " a raw-head and bloody- 
bones way of teaching loyalty." He then went to Bel- 
fast, and attended a revival service in a chapel. It was 
" filled decently with quiet, sober-looking people;" and 
he was chiefly struck by the sensible and interesting 
character of the lecture. Two or three converts gave 
addresses, but there was no "screaming or shrieking;" 
and he summed up his impressions by saying as he left. 



:^6 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

" This is God's work, and God grant it may go on as 
now." ^ After a visit to the Giant's Causeway, he was 
back at Oxford about September 20.] 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

September 1859. 

I am sure, my dear D., that civihsation never blessed 
man with two greater boons than a pen and a sheet of 
paper. Here am I book weary — and yet the book is 
no tedious one, but the tedium-fit is on me and must 
out ; here am 1 flinging myself down for a lounge and' 
a chat with you on this broad sheet, just as I should 
fling myself into your easy-chair. Now take care not 
to bother me for news, or expect me to talk epigrams 
or clever the Lord-knows-whats ; remember I have only 
dropped in for a lounge and a chat, and mean to be as 
lazy and as rambling as I please. And as nothing is 
pleasanter to a lazy soul than a bit of a lecture, allow 
me to rap your knuckles pretty severely for your last 
communication. I own to a great liking for your 
correspondence — 'tis such a genuine olla-podrida of 
love, chit-chat, riding. Homer, dancing, and geology, 
that it has all the pleasurable eff'ect on me that John- 
son's Dictionary had on the old lady, who averred (as I 
do of yours) " that it was the most charming reading 
in the world; indeed, its only drawback was a trifling 
want of connection." But this is the very point .that 
pleases me in your letters, bits of news, bits of senti- 
ment, a poem or a pebble are tumbled out of your bag 
in that genial hearty fashion that recalls the old rooms, 
and the chat that rouses me out of the blues. There is 
a realism, a Dawkinsism, in it which is the very essence 
of letter-writing. M. writes as if he meant to print, 
and etiquette requires the same printable fustian in my 
replies. But with you one feels as though one had had 
a heavy grind, and here was the very fellow to get tea 
for one and cheer one up. And this is the great charm 

^ He was much impressed by a pamphlet upon this subject by Archdeacon Stopford, 
called The Work and the Counterzoori. 



I EARLY LIFE 37 

of letter-writing, that, though you and I are far away, 
yet chatting thus I seem to have you on the other side 
of the table, and to be drawing for perennial supplies 
from the " silver teapot." 

Your note was waiting for me when I returned from 
Ireland. 

I have been to the land of the Paddies, 
And dined at the Gresham genteelly. 
And peeled the potatoes so mealy. 
But of all that I sought there. 
Picked up there, or bought there. 
There was nought to compare with their whiskey and water. 

Much. boding and trembling and fearing 
I crossed o'er the say to sweet Erin — 
No boat e'er was tauter. 
But wind and waves fought her. 
Sick and ill, how I longed for some whiskey and water. 

I traversed bold Antrim, defiant. 

Till I trod the famed road of the giant (Giant's Causeway), 
But my tooth — the wind caught her 
I wished each hour shorter. 
And aching groaned forth only *♦ Whiskey and water ! " 

I grant you the copyright of this most exquisite 
lyric, in right of the chagrin you will feel at not having 
been with me in my view of those basaltic formations. 
Of course they were lost on me (in a geological sense, I 
mean), but I remembered my poor F. G. S. in prospective, 
and bought you a couple of specimens that looked 
uncommon. Debit one bob to our friendship account. 
Jenkins is up. He has been mobbed at St. George's, 
half for his Puseyism, half for his beard, but very 
characteristically finds that the mob were very civil 
and good-hearted people in reality. 

I presume I ought to give you some account of 
myself, but really my existence is so monotonous that 
I am afraid of wearying you. Let me in preference 
recall the pleasantest companion I ever had in my life. 
*' A new flame," you will say. Hear and judge. At 
Dublin, auguring sickness and in a silent moody 
humour, I stepped aboard the packet. I was soon 



38 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

busy with the luggage, and that settled, strolled sulkily 
along deck. A lady in the distance bowed. " Some 
absurd Hibernian mistake," thought I. As I passed 
she bowed again. I borrowed resolution from despair 
and explained, " I am afraid I have not the honour," 

etc. " Miss P ," said she, throwing up her veil. 

Now, though I had been introduced to her " mamma " 
I had never spoken a word to her younger ladyship, 
but that was no business of mine. We sat down and 
chatted the whole way to Holyhead. Now a chat of 
five hours without intermission must surely have turned 
upon, or included, some serious matter. The beauty 
of this chat was that it was pure nonsense throughout. 
The naivete of my companion was diverting. " She 
detested nonsense, silly nonsense, which gentlemen 
seemed to consider themselves privileged to address 
to ladies, as though our sex " (with a pretty toss of the 
head) " had weaker brains than their own." " But 
what has our own chat been but nonsense ? " said I. 
" Oh, but not silly nonsense," said my little casuist. 
We secured the same carriage at Holyhead, and no 
sooner did our chat flag than out came " the language 
of flowers." Could anything have been more childish .? 
Nothing at any rate would have been more amusing. 
We chose and laughed, and laughed and chose again, 
till my little charmer grew desperately sleepy, " Make 
me your sleeping-post," I whispered. "Indeed I won't," 
was the uncompromising reply. Nod upon nod, the 
lovely little face drooped and drooped, till Nature com- 
pelled her to yield ; she smiled a sort of coquettish 
protest, and soon her little head rested on my shoulder, 
and she was fast asleep. Oh, pretty girl-faces, what 
wondrous fools you make of us cynics ! You may 
have guessed — what is for the present a secret — that I 
do not intend to go up for a class. This will fall like 
a bombshell among the Dons, and I shall have to 
endure a few skirmishes with the Sublime William and 
his fellows, and not a few black looks from quarters 
which I care more about. But people are beginning to 



I EARLY LIFE 39 

comprehend that what I will to do, I do ; and if they are 
philosophers, the Dons will soon give over a struggle in 
which they cannot but be beaten. At any rate I have 
counted the cost and thrown my class to the winds. 
My reasons would be too long for a letter which is 
already of monstrous dimensions, and which has, I am 
sure, earned those antiquarian entries, etc., of whose 
existence I am beginning to grow not a little sceptical. 
— Believe me, dear D., yours, J. R. Green. 



To M. y. 

March 1Z60. 

[Written from Theale.] 

" My business " has been of the most varied descrip- 
tion. I have been geologising, archasologising, physi- 
ologising, studying bone-caves, old ruins, and stomachs ; 
and, in addition, lecturing, training a choir, and con- 
ducting a college-service down in the moor. The 
singing is of the vilest. The boys study vocalising 
with clenched teeth, and the girls are universally nasal. 
One or two of the old band, who have been superseded 
by the harmonium, still attempt by their voices to pre- 
serve the memory of departed violins and hautboys, a 
solitary flute survives, " dull, melancholy, slow." The 
clerk, whose bass has rusted into a nasal tone, leads this 
promising choir. I did not attempt to interfere with 
such a venerable antiquity. I rested my hope in the 
youth. These hulking young farmers' sons who roar 
out songs round the kitchen fire and choruses at the 
tavern, — the young ladies, who after six days of 
draggled tails and mob-caps, appear on Sunday in 
the gaudiest hues and hugest-feathered hats to pipe 
through a mouth-aperture of about the circumference 
of a shilling, offered (I thought) promise of a mine of 
vocal wealth. I tried, and after several weeks' endeavour 
have enlarged the feminine aperture to the size of half- 
a-crown, and cajoled the farmers into a low growl 
which I compliment as bass. But difficulties thicken 



40 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

round us. There is not a single ear in my choir or in 
the parish; the old choir and clerk scent my intentions, 
and are meditating mutiny ; and my friend the parson 
thinks it " would not be wise to attempt a change." 



To W. Boyd Dawkins 

Oxford, June z6, 1 860. 

My dear Dax — I have so carefully packed up all 
my notepaper and the like, that 1 must entreat pardon 
for writing to you on odds and ends. The family, 
visitors, etc., are all busy downstairs in the Sabbath 
amusement of " cakes and wine." So I have half an 
hour of my unbored self to scribble you a few notes on 
what has been going on since your going off. My 
brother recompensed the tender care bestowed on his 
smalls by an excessit^ evasit, which threw on my 
shoulders the charge of a squad of lionesses while he 
was enjoying his otium cum bat and wickets at Sher- 
borne. For the first time in my life I have blessed 
the rain whose visits have given me occasional after- 
noons of respite and solitude. I have no one up 
with me now. . . . 

I suppose you saw all about the Commemoration in 
the papers. The Times report was correct enough. It 
was very tame and slow — the effort at propriety suc- 
ceeded in begetting a wondrous dulness. I heard but 
one new joke, and that was wondrous as on an old sub- 
ject. In one of the dead pauses a wag called on " Old 
Bess " for a song. By-the-bye there was another. 
After cheering the ladies, the Dons, and the undergrads, 
some one sang out "a cheer for everybody — except 
John Bright." A combination of extensive charity 
with unflinching Conservatism which deserves com- 
memoration. The Newdigate was more Newdigate 
than it has been of late. The gentleman stands on 
Guadarrama's steep and looks down on his theme — the 
Escurial. If the weather has been at all similar in 



I EARLY LIFE 41 

Spain to the weather in England, it is to be hoped the 
Muses provided him with a mackintosh. 

I suppose you want to know a Httle of myself — at 
least my vanity won't suppose the contrary. Thanks to 
the rain I have been able to read a little, and am wonder- 
fully interested at present in — what do you think? — 
Lyell's Elements. I much fear that the sermon this 
morning passed unheeded into the Paris Basin, at least 
it ought to have done so if it wished to gain my atten- 
tion, for there were my thoughts at the time. I don't 
think I have ever read anything more admirable than 
Lyell's account of it. The great value of the whole 
book consists, to my unscientific mind, in its scrupulous 
adherence to the rule of reading the Past by the Present. 
For instance (though I don't doubt you will smile at 
my error) I have always attributed abrupt contortions 
of strata — such as the zigzag fissures of coal-mines and 
the like — to sudden and violent displacement. Lyell 
takes one down a coal-mine, shows one the gradual 
pressing up of the argillaceous bottom of the gallery 
till the whole cavity is filled. Days, months, even 
years may elapse between the first bending of the pave- 
ment and the time of its reaching the roof. 1 had 
formed quite a different notion of Lyell from your 
conversation. I expected a dull, dry German, and 
found one of the 'cutest and most entertaining gentle- 
men I have ever met. ... — Yours very truly, 

J. R. G. 

To W, Boyd Dawkins 

13 High Street, Oxford, 
June 28, i860. 

As you may suppose, my dear Dax, I have become, 
at the cost of a sov., an A.B.A., which cabalistical 
sounds signify "Associate of the British Association," 
and give you the privilege of attending the meetings 
of that highly scientific body. Facetiae seem to be the 
order of the day — in deference to the ladies, I suppose. 



42 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Just as the Dons strive to rub off their dust, and rub 
up their wits to greet these fair creatures at Com- 
memoration. Sedgwick was facetious, Phillips facetious, 
Crawford facetious, Murchison facetious. 

But this is all beside the point. I sate down spe- 
cially to tell you of the honour Phillips did you to-day. 
He gave, in an opening paper, a sketch of the circa- 
Oxon geology, especially at Stonesfield and Shotover ; 
and then at the end dipped into the Saurians. Out came 
that dear old Toebone (bless that Cetiosaur !), and the 
audience were informed that they were indebted for 
that gratifying sight to " my friend Mr. Dawkins ! " 

There's news for you, old fellow. F.G.S. is nothing 
to this. Oh, do find another toebone for next year, 
and believe me I'll throw up a curacy to attend and 
hear you kudized. 

Hope you are enjoying yourself, and remain yours 
very truly, J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

July 3, i860. 

[A passage from this letter is given in the Life of 
Huxley^ see vol. i. pp. 179-189, where will be found a 
full account of the famous encounter between Huxley 
and Bishop Wilberforce.] 

I steal a bit of Dick's notepaper, my dear Dax, to 
tell you that I shall be down in Somerset on Thursday 
next. Williamson returns on Saturday. Could you 
come over at the beginning of the week, and do that 
bone-cave in which 1 began to feel a much stronger 
interest as I got a clearer idea of its period ? The 
mention of it reminds me that I saw your " friend " 
Dr. Falconer the other day. A good-humoured, jocular 
Irishman, whom Lyell styled second as a palgeontol- 
ogist to Owen only ! So you measure swords with a 
creditable antagonist. He has not as yet read a paper 
but he rose to speak on one of the most notable which 



I EARLY LIFE 43 

I have as yet heard at the B. A. A Mr. C. Moore, 
who lives at Bath, found in a quarry in its neighbour- 
hood a small drift-deposit of the Triassic Epoch. He 
carted two tons of it home, a distance of twenty miles, 
and spent two years in washing, sorting, and micro- 
scopically examining it. He was thus enabled to 
exhibit about three hatfuls of fish teeth ; a similar 
quantity of scales, etc., — but what was of real impor- 
tance some twenty small jawbones, etc., of mammals 
— unmistakablemammalsjjudicibusprofessore Eugeaco 
et Doctore Auceps" (is not that the Latin for Falconer?). 
This brings them far lower, you see, than even the 
Stonesfield slate. Some two such remains have 
been found in the Muschelkalk in Germany — with 
which this may be about contemporaneous — but 
they have been fought over and disputed. These 
twenty put an extinguisher on all question. Lyell 
made a beautiful speech on the matter. Paucity of 
remains, he argued, do not argue paucity of animal 
life. Were we left to infer the animal creation of the 
present day from the deposits of the Ganges or the 
Nile, should we be content merely with the few species 
we might light on ? Rather (and here he brought 
beautifully in the principle of the correlation of life) 
should we not be bound to infer from these few a large 
quantity of species as yet unfound ? Important too — 
he said — was the fact that up to that time all the 
animals thus discovered were very minute, while in 
this last deposit were found remains which must have 
been of an animal as large as a pole-cat, a size which 
at once sweeps away all hypotheses founded on this 
fact of minuteness, and gives us an ordinary link in 
the common series of animal life. Strongly Darwinian, 
eh? and strongly common-sense too. I have (after fin- 
ishing Lyell) been reading Hugh Miller's posthumous 
book, his sketches (originally intended, had he lived, to 
form the basis of a geologic History of Scotland), and 
I have been much struck with the utter weakness of the 
theory to which he clings so very fondly, of the " defi- 



44 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

niteness " of organic life, its " dead stops," etc. Such 
a theory required and justified that dioramic view of 
geology Vv'hich Miller adopts — picture succeeding pic- 
ture in strong contrast — but which seems to me utterly 
unwarrantable and unscientific. Read after Lyell he 
strikes me as a man who gathered up the researches 
of others and gave them a dash of the picturesque. 

I am afraid 1 am boring you (I always bore my 
friends with the subject I have on hand), but now I 
am on Hugh Miller it reminds me that I have made 
extracts from him — one of which (of the period of 
the Tertiaries down to the post-pliocene and human 
epochs) seems truthful and good. It will be useful for 
your sketch of the bone-cave period, as it is drawn 
out in great detail. His oolite reminded me funnily 
of yours (a great compliment by the way), but has an 
Iguanodon in its menagerie which I don't think you 
possessed. It may be fun to read, so I will bring 
my notebook down. I was introduced to Robert 
Chambers (the supposed author of the Vestiges) the 
other day, and heard him chuckle over the episcopal 
defeat. I haven't told you that story, have I } On 
Saturday morning I met Jenkins going to the Museum. 
We joined company, and he proposed going to Section 
D, the Zoology, etc., " to hear the Bishop of Oxford 
smash Darwin." " Smash Darwin ! Smash the Pyra- 
mids," said I, in great wrath, and muttering something 
about " impertinence," which caused Jenkins to explain 
that " the Bishop was a first-class in mathematics, 
you know, and so has a right to treat on scientific 
matters," which of course silenced my cavils. Well, 
when Professor Draper had ceased his hour and a 
half of nasal Yankeeism, up rose " Sammivel," and 
proceeded to act the smasher ; the white chokers, who 
were abundant, cheered lustily, a sort of " Pitch it 
into him " cheer, and the smasher got so uproarious as 
to pitch into Darwin's friends — Darwin being smashed 
— and especially Professor Huxley. Still the white 
chokers cheered, and the smasher rattled on. " He 



I EARLY LIFE 45 

had been told that Professor Huxley had said that he 
didn't see that it mattered much to a man whether his 
grandfather was an ape or not. Let the learned 
Professor speak for himself" and the like. Which 
being ended — and let me say that such rot never fell 
from episcopal lips before — arose Huxley, young, cool, 
quiet, sarcastic, scientific in fact and in treatment, and 
gave his lordship such a smashing as he may meditate 
on with profit over his port at Cuddesdon. This was 
the exordium, " I asserted, and I repeat — that a man 
has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his 
grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should 
feel shame in recalling, it would rather be a man^ a 
man of restless and versatile intellect, who, not content 
with an equivocal success in his own sphere of activity, 
plunges into scientific questions with which he has no 
real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless 
rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from 
the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and 
skilled appeals to religious prejudice." I will tell you 
more when I see you. — Till then, believe me, dear Dax, 
your very affectionate J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

Oxford, September 22, i860. 

Dear Dax — I wrote crossly yesterday ; happily I 
wrote to you^ who have always the kindly good sense 
to laugh at, and to laugh away, my ill-humour. My 
crossness was simply the result of an intense wretched- 
ness at being left to make up my mind for myself. I 
always need a Privy Councillor. When once I begin 
to deliberate I see so many fair plans of action — all 
with so many good reasons for carrying them out — each 
with a counter-bundle of good reasons for letting them 
alone — that to resolve on any one is impossible, while 
to do nothing is painfully ridiculous. It was very vexa- 
tious to a gentleman of this character to find his Coun- 
cillor — his Resolver — fled speechless — " the oracles 



46 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

are dumb." Just fancy the feelings of the poor Hellenic 
gentlemen who have always paid their fee, and had their 
minds duly made up for them ! 1 will write to Warren 
to-morrow. 

We had Morrell's great dinner to the Rifle Corps 
here last Thursday. Bishop, Duke, Heads of Houses, 
M.P.'s, etc., all in robes ; a pretty sight they say (the 
" they " being ladies). At the end of the proceedings 
Cooke of the Chronicle inserts in type my verses against 
the Rifle Corps — unde ira I A civic festivity comes 
oflF on Wednesday — the " Beating the Bounds," a 
going round the civic borders. As civic grub is good, 
and civic speeches amusing, I think " I shall be there." 

My vicar writes to tell me he wishes me to get 
influence over, etc., the " young men " of the parish. 
This, the very sort of work I shall like, has set me 
planning, as you may fancy. I see how the Ologies 
may be brought in. I have been naughty as to work 
lately — reading Goethe and Schiller instead of Paley 
and Pearson — I know from which one learns the truest 
theology. I look forward even now to your return. 
" Come where glory waits thee." — Meanwhile, believe 
me, your aflTectionate friend, J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

Oxford, October z, i860. 

[The first paragraph refers to the conclusion of a 
piece of family business.] 

My dear Dax — The governor has gone to a civic 
dinner, my brother to a city lecture, my aunt is as busy 
as a bee; nobody is idle but I, and I am going to 
devote a few minutes of my idleness to you. First, 
W.'s reply has been all that I could wish, sensible in 
accepting facts as facts, generous in the kindly tone 
he still preserves amid circumstances that might seem 
to call for iratum Patrem ; he parts from me as I would 
wish him to part, robing himself like Caesar, as he falls, 



I EARLY LIFE 47 

in much of that ideal nobleness which circumstances had 
begun so fatally to strip him of. 

For myself I feel like an emancipated slave. I hardly 
knew how heavy my yoke had been till it was thus once 
and for ever broken and thrown off. Thanks to you, 
old boy ! I should never ,have had the resolution to 
break it for myself. And so, for the five hundredth 
time in my life, I have the proud satisfaction of turning 
round on myself with a " What a fool I have been ! " 
Not that I wish to remain wise if celibacy be wisdom. 
I want a wife. I distrust my own choice, but if you 
should know of a suitable article it would be friendly 
to inform me. Only a few provisos. She must be 
intellectual enough to sympathise with my pursuits ; 
orderly and resolute enough to fill up those two vacant 
apartments in my character. It may be as well for her 
to know German, and to love Goethe. Pretty, though 
this is of less consequence, as I shall certainly fancy her 
so after six months ; a good housekeeper, with a little 
money to aid in floating our Noah's ark, with its future 
Shems and Japhets. 

Oh, old fellow, how I wish you had been in Oxford 
to go with me round the city boundaries. About 
once in eight years the Mayor has to do this, winding 
up with a great feed. I was invited and went. We 
marched in red and fur (i.e. the Corporation), cocked 
hats and mace, down the High to Magdalen Bridge. 
Here we dismissed the rifle band, the aldermen doffed 
their robes, the bulk of the crowd dispersed, but the 
faithful followed the Mayor in punts across the stream, 
along the Cherwell Meadows, across Christchurch Mead 
by the side of the ditch that runs across it, and then 
entering some house-boats which were waiting for us 
with the ladies on board, we went as far as the Long 
Bridge where the city boundary stone is situated. Here 
we were joined by the king of the Sclavonians, a club 
of firemen who are now dying out, arrayed in alder- 
manic costume, with a royal crown of "real gold," as 
the ladies all averred, upon his head. His Majesty was 



48 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

presented with a bottle of gin, whose head he graciously 
condescended to knock off, and then to swallow its 
contents. Bidding adieu to the monarch we again 
returned, bade farewell to the ladies, and punted under 
those arches on which Randall's house stands into the 
Hincksey meadows, through which, muddy as they 
were, we proceeded to pound. We were cheered by 
the merry beat of the city drum — the city fife having 
been early " winded " and dropped behind. " You 
make me quite wild, you do," said the drum, as he 
dragged forward his lagging comrade, but the fife was 
too exhausted, or screwed, to reply. At Hincksey we 
found the barrel of beer which the tenant is bound to 
offer the Mayor on such occasions stolen, so onwards 
we trudged towards Godstow, only pausing at Botley 
to shy bread and cheese and pipes and ale at the crowd ; 
you may fancy what a glorious scramble it was. My 
party now led " across country," but getting pounded 
at the second hedge, I was picked up by the alderman 
who was comfortably ensconced in a punt, and conveyed 
to the dinner at Godstow. The feed at an end, oflF we 
started again, but as the plank-bearers had got too 
drunk to stir, the Mayor had to jump ditches — item 
the mace. The Mayor did wonders, and reflected credit 
on the city. The mace made oft acquaintance with the 
mud. So we emerged on Portmeadow, which is a per- 
fect quagmire now, only to be paddled through, and, 
crossing the two roads, descended into the vale of the 
Cherwell, where the aldermen again embarked, while I 
managed to scramble over hedges and ditches as best I 
might, and in a mangled and fragmentary condition 
emerged near Holywell Church, rejoined the procession 
at Magdalen Bridge, and marched home to the "sound 
of trumpets." As a bit of pluck, I finished the evening 
at the theatre ; but didn't I pay for it the next day. 
Good luck to you and your work. Tell me in your 
next, as it is quite jolly to find you swimming about so 
cosily among the Tritons of Science. — And believe me, 
yours very sincerely, J. R. G. 



EARLY LIFE 49 



To W. Boyd Dawkins 

GoswELL Road, E.C., 
(^end of December') i860. 

[He has just been ordained to his first curacy under 
the Rev. Henry Ward.] 

I am a day behind the fair, my dear Dawkins, but 
you must charge the non-arrival of a letter yesterday to 
the account of the Corporation of London. For I was 
trotting about with Ward from one Alderman to another 
for the purpose of " soliciting their support " with the 
city companies "in re " our Church restoration. It was 
amazing fun to sit by and watch the scene, the delicate 
advances of the Church, the shy reserve of the city — 
Ward craftily shaking the oats " Christian charity — 
accustomed munificence — noble liberality" — Sir John, 
or Sir Bob looking askance at the end of the halter that 
peeped out and holding a yard off with " ifs " and 
" buts " and " possibles." Considering that there are 
no finer mendicants than the clergy of our Reformed 
Church, it is no slight treat for a lover of humour to 
listen to their invectives against the begging Friar of 
the pre-reform period, who had at any rate the honesty 
to " sing for his supper " and preach a merry sermon 
from the portable pulpit he carried round, as the Punch 
and Judy dramatists carry theirs to this day, before he 
sent the hat round. While we " Evans " [i.e. Evan- 
gelicals] toady Aldermen for a couple of guineas, the 
Pussycats find opulent devotees who beg to be allowed 
to hang golden bells round their feline throats before 
they fail down and mew in adoration at their feet. 
The English of which is that a City merchant is 
endowing a church, building schools, and forming 
a Shoreditch district which is to possess Baird as its 
incumbent. " Ah, fortunatos Pussycatos ! " I am 
very glad, however, of the choice. For Baird is real 
and earnest in his faith, and is Romaniser enough 
to be charitable to others. He and I understand 



so LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part i 

each other thoroughly, and he has already " bagged " 
me to help him at his new church. Of course 
he is bitten with the prevailing epidemic of Antira- 
tionalism, but he looks upon my case as exceptional, 
and like Ward would allow me to preach essays 
and reviews if I chose. Ward believes 1 shall settle 
down into a "steady old Evangelical." Baird believes, 
and argues out his belief, that I shall end in kissing the 
toe of that " improper person " who sits so uncomfort- 
ably on seven hills, — and I enjoy my liberty. 



PART II 



CLERICAL CAREER 



The following letters belong to the period in which Green 
was an active London clergyman, I will first give the 
dates of the various positions which he held during his 
clerical career. He was ordained deacon at Christmas 
i860, and priest at Christmas 1861, on both occasions 
by the Bishop of London, A. C. Tait, who became a 
very warm personal friend. His first curacy was under 
the Rev. Henry Ward, incumbent of St. Barnabas, 
King's Square, Goswell Road. In the spring of 1863, 
at the request of Bishop Tait, he took charge of a dere- 
lict parish in Hoxton. His health, however, soon gave 
way ; and a year's rest was ordered, which he was un- 
able to afford. He gave up Hoxton in the autumn, 
but at the end of the year took a curacy under the Rev. 
Philip Gell, at Notting Hill. In April 1 864 he accepted 
a " mission curacy " at St. Peter's, Stepney ; and in 
November 1865 was appointed, by Bishop Tait, to the 
perpetual curacy of St. Philip's, Stepney. He resigned 
this at Easter 1869. Tait, who had just become Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, appointed him, at the same time, 
to the librarianship of Lambeth, a purely honorary 
office ; and he ceased from that time to discharge any 
active clerical duties. 

During eight years (1861-68) Green had worked at 
different tasks with an energy which would have been 

51 



52 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

remarkable in a strong man, and is altogether astonish- 
ing when the state of his health is taken into account. 
The references in his letters will show how varied were 
his interests, though unfortunately they are too frag- 
mentary to give anything like a complete picture. I 
will bring together some of the different aspects of his 
energy, and I must leave it to readers to understand 
that the various occupations which I mention in succes- 
sion were carried on simultaneously. 

When he first took orders his friend Stanley desired 
him to accept a curacy in the West End, where he 
would have an opportunity of showing his abilities to a 
cultivated audience, and be on the way to preferment. 
Green, however, desired to take a share in a more 
arduous sphere of clerical work. The influence of 
Maurice and the Christian Socialists had lately drawn 
the attention of many young men to the importance of 
bringing Church influence to bear upon the great social 
problem. Green's political Liberalism aroused his 
sympathies in this same direction ; and he resolved to 
take duty in the East End of London, where he rightly 
perceived that there would be ample opportunity for 
the exertion of all his powers in the warfare against vice 
and barbarism. 

Green not only took the keenest interest in the social 
duties of a parish priest, but showed remarkable aptitude 
for their discharge. His first curacy brought one new 
and important element into his life. He was for the 
first time welcomed into a domestic circle of refined 
tastes. For Mrs. Ward, the wife of his incumbent, he 
soon conceived the warmest afi^ection, and, as will 
be seen, felt her death (July 2, 1863) with singular 
keenness. A letter to Mrs. Creighton (February 11, 
1 871), to be given hereafter, will show how lasting 
was the impression produced. The love of children 



II CLERICAL CAREER 53 

was always one of Green's stongest feelings, and he 
showed it by a lasting regard for Mrs. Ward's family. 
One of them, Mr. Humphry Ward, became a life-long 
friend, and has kindly communicated some recollections. 
" My mother," says Mr. Ward, "ever genial, sunny, 
and cheerful, and supported by a happy and extremely 
simple religious faith against the difficulties of a large 
family, a huge parish, and narrow means, became like 
an elder sister to him, and he was never so happy 
as when reading a new volume of Tennyson to her, or 
discussing Mme. Guyon, or (and this was equally 
natural) having wild romps with my small brothers and 
sisters." Green took a lively interest in the studies of 
Mr. Ward, then at Merchant Taylor's School. He 
would walk round the " dismal garden of King's Square, 
discoursing to his young friend upon the school studies." 
His " wide knowledge of history and literature, his ex- 
traordinary instinct for style, and the passionate enthu- 
siasm with which he held to his ideals of truth, justice, 
and sincerity were of immense importance to me." The 
routine studies were " transformed by the fiery genius 
of this young student," and " under his touch things 
that had been mere names became full of meaning. 
Thucydides took his place in universal history; the life 
of the Roman Forum took the colours of reality, and 
in proportion as he shook down the edifice of Bibliola- 
try on which I had been brought up, the Bible became 
interesting." 

Saint Barnabas, says Mr. Ward, was a vast square 
church, set down in the midst of a squalid parish of 
7000 people, not one in fifty of whom ever thought of 
going to church ; there was no parish machinery, and 
the fabric of the church " had been indescribably dirty 
and forlorn on my father's appointment to it a year 
before." Green was encouraged by Mrs. Ward's sym- 



54 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

pathy in his first discharge of parochial duties. An 
interesting account of his activity has been given in an 
article by Mr. Philip Lyttelton Gell, son of his incum- 
bent at Notting Hill.^ " Green," says Mr. Gell, "spent 
the best years of his life in fighting the battle of religion 
and civilisation amidst the ever-teeming social chaos of 
the East End." He was admirably qualified to exert 
personal influence. He made friends with the poor 
individually as he did with more cultivated persons. 
He sympathised with their troubles and planned amuse- 
ments for them, getting up penny readings or taking 
them to Rosherville or Epping Forest. A lady tells me 
that he was constantly to be seen in the back streets, 
talking to his parishioners, and generally with a group 
of poor children clustering round him. One anecdote 
is significant; he used to tell how he had found a row 
inhabited by a specially quiet and sober set of people, 
and often took a cup of tea with them. A policeman 
afterwards had revealed to him the secret of their good 
manners. They were all employed as coiners and 
therefore careful to give no occasion for any intrusion 
of the authorities. Personal influences could only reach 
the surface, beneath which lay vast masses of a miser- 
able and criminalised population. 

When Green was transferred to Hoxton in 1863, 
the position was so difficult that the bishop asked him 
to undertake it as a special favour, and assured him 
that, should he fail, it would not be from any fault 
of his own. The incumbent had been suspended, and 
the church was in such bad odour that a shoemaker 
refused to send boots to the parsonage till he had 
received payment in advance. Green set vigorously 
to work. He started a restoration of the church; and 

1 Fortnightly Re-vietv for May 1883. See also the article by Mr. H. R. Haweis, 
in the Contemporary Re-vieiv of May 1883. 



II CLERICAL CAREER ss 

his sermons rapidly increased the congregation. He 
also began to take a special interest in the schools. 
When compelled to change, he took the curacy at 
Notting Hill in the hope, partly realised, that the 
position would be more favourable to his health. He 
was enabled to return to the East End, and again 
exposed himself to an excessive strain. 

Soon after his appointment to St. Philip's, a special 
demand was made upon Green's energy by the outbreak 
of cholera in 1866. A panic had begun. Many of 
the first sufferers naturally died in the hospitals; their 
friends thought that the hospital treatment was to 
blame, and refused to send in patients. Ignorance 
and alarm made it difficult to obtain treatment for 
those who remained in their own lodgings, or to carry 
out precautionary measures. Some who should have 
helped deserted their posts, and it was difficult to get 
a sufficient supply of nurses. Green devoted himself 
unsparingly to his duties. "Within an hour from the 
first seizure in his parish. Green himself" (says Mr. 
Gell) "met the dying patients in the London hospital, 
and thenceforward, while the plague lasted. Green, 
like other clergy in the parishes attacked, worked day 
and night amidst the panic-stricken people, as officer 
of health, inspector of nuisances, ambulance super- 
intendent, as well as spiritual consoler and burier of 
the dead." He showed no alarm, except for his 
friends. Meeting the wife of a neighbouring clergy- 
man in the hospital, he expostulated with her passion- 
ately, for the sake of her children, against incurring 
the risk. He appealed to Sir Andrew Clark, who was 
then physician at the hospital, and from this time was 
a warm friend of Green. Clark decided that the lady's 
influence upon the nurses was so important that she 
could not be spared. Green himself, as Mr. Haweis 



S6 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

says, laboured energetically and successfully In soothing 
the hospital patients. Haweis mentions another curious 
fact. Green helped to secure the removal of the dead 
from the houses; and his best helpers were "the lowest 
women of the town." It was no uncommon thing 
to see him going to an infected house, between two 
such outcasts who had volunteered to help him in an 
errand of mercy. On one occasion he found a man 
dangerously ill in an upper room. Some big draymen 
in the street refused to help. Green therefore tried 
to carry the man downstairs. His slight frame was 
unequal to the effort, and the two fell from the top to 
the bottom of the stairs together. The man who was 
in a state of collapse was not injured. 

The cholera passed away soon; but in the succeeding 
years there was great distress in the East End, due 
partly to the failure of Overend and Gurney, while 
trade disputes were leading to a collapse of important 
industries. A lax administration of the poor laws was 
causing an ominous increase of pau^rism. Green was 
deeply impressed by these evils, and by the bad effects 
of indiscriminate charity. He wrote upon the subject 
in the Saturday Review. His articles show close 
familiarity with the facts as well as thorough common 
sense, and a clear grasp of the situation. He insisted 
upon the importance of a firm administration of the 
poor laws, a steady application of the labour test, and 
a limitation of almsgiving to exceptional cases. He 
was appointed an ex-officio guardian by the Poor Law 
Board ; and he helped to form a local committee in 
Stepney, intended to remedy the evils due to the over- 
lapping of many charitable agencies, and anticipating 
the principles soon afterwards accepted by the Charity- 
Organisation Society. Edward Denison, whose early 
death cut short a most promising career, settled in 



II CLERICAL CAREER 57 

Stepney in 1867 to study the social problems. He 
made Green's acquaintance, and 1 shall give one or two 
of the letters which Green addressed to him upon their 
common interests. 

Green afterwards reviewed the letters of Denison 
collected by Sir Baldwyn Leighton.^ A passage 
from this review, describing their first interview, 
illustrates Green's position at the time. " A vicar's 
Monday morning," he says, " is never the pleasantest 
of awakenings, but the Monday morning of an 
East End vicar brings worries that far eclipse the 
mere headache and dyspepsia of his rural brother. 
It is the * parish morning.' All the complicated 
machinery of a great ecclesiastical, charitable, and 
educational organisation has got to be wound up 
afresh, and set going again for another week. The 
superintendent of the Women's Mission is waiting 
with a bundle of accounts, complicated as only ladies' 
accounts can be. The churchwarden has come with 
a face full of gloom to consult on the falling off in 
the offertory. The scripture-reader has brought his 
* visiting book ' to be inspected, and a special report 
of the character of a doubtful family in the parish. 
The organist drops in to report something wrong 
in the pedals. There is a letter to be written to the 
Inspector of Nuisances directing his attention to 
certain odoriferous drains in Pig-and-Whistle Alley. 
The nurse brings her sick-list, and her little bill for 
the sick-kitchen. The schoolmaster wants a fresh 
pupil teacher, and discusses nervously the prospects 
of his scholars in the coming inspection. There is 
the interest on the penny bank to be calculated, a 
squabble in the choir to be adjusted, a district visitor 
to be upheld, reports to be drawn up for the Bishop's 

1 His review is reprinted as " A Brother of the Poor," in Stray Studies. 



58 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Fund, and a great charitable society, the curates' 
sick-list to be inspected, and a preacher to be found 
for the next church festival." To complete the 
picture, it must be noted that Green's worries were 
seriously aggravated by money anxieties. He had no 
independent means ; his official income was small, and 
he spent nearly the whole upon his parish.^ If he desired 
to start any new scheme, he had to provide the funds 
by raising subscriptions, or by literary works of which 
I shall speak directly. Meanwhile, I may note that 
little remains to show Green's fitness for another 
clerical function. But his preaching and his earnest 
and reverent reading of the church services left a 
permanent impression upon many hearers. A friend 
says that he would descend from the pulpit at the end 
of the service and give the blessing so impressively 
that his stature seemed to dilate. Mr. Bryce heard 
him at St. Philip's, and he says, " I shall never for- 
get the impression made on me by the impassioned 
sentences that rang through the church, from the 
fiery little figure in the pulpit, with its thin face and 
bright black eyes." The church had been nearly 
empty and, before long, his preaching attracted a 
congregation of about 800, which was thought to be 
a remarkable achievement. Many of his friends speak 
of Green's astonishing readiness as a public speaker, 
and his power of riveting the attention of audiences, 
whether at an archaeological association or at a meeting 
of the parish vestry. He once persuaded a meeting of 
the " C.C.C." to change its opinion — a very rare feat 
at any meeting — by his forcible exposition of the evils 
of indiscriminate charity. In the pulpit, as was natural, 

^ His cheque-books of this time are preserved, and nearly all the items are for 
charitable purposes — "schools," "wine for the sick," and so forth. Some modest 
sums are set down, too, for household expenses, and something goes to the book- 
sellers. 



II CLERICAL CAREER 59 

his manner was more restrained, and he could not 
give full play to his vivacious wit. He despised, it 
is said, the character of a popular preacher, and he 
found himself more at home, as he notes, with East 
End costermongers than with the respectable in- 
habitants of Notting Hill, who expected him to use 
their conventional formulas. He prepared his sermons 
carefully, and acquired the habit of thinking them 
out while walking in the streets. The only sermon 
which I have seen was preached upon the death of 
Mrs. Ward. It is not only expressive of a singularly 
strong ertiotion, but illustrates the literary grace of all 
his writing. 

He endeavoured in other ways to promote the 
intellectual culture of the people. He started a 
literary society in his parish. After his death, one of 
the members produced a book of essays, which he 
had preserved as a treasure. They had been almost 
rewritten by Green by way of a lesson in composition. 

The activities of which I have spoken, multifarious 
as they were, occupied only half of Green's life. His 
labours in the East End, as he often himself remarked, 
had an important bearing upon his literary work. His 
sympathies with human beings were strengthened ; and 
the history might have been written in a very different 
tone had the writer passed his days in academical 
seclusion. His interest in the welfare of the masses, 
and his conviction that due importance should be 
given to their social condition, determined a very 
important peculiarity of the work. A characteristic 
passage at the opening of the essay upon Denison 
shows how the two strains of thought might be 
blended. After speaking of the " endless rows of 
monotonous streets," he says, " There is poetry enough 
in East London ; poetry in the great river which 



6o LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

washes it on the south, in the fretted tangle of cordage 
and mast that peeps over the roofs of Shadwell, or in 
the great hulls moored along the wharves of Wapping ; 
poetry in the ' Forest* that fringes it to the east, in the 
few glades that remain of Eppingand Hainault — glades 
ringing with the shouts of school-children out for their 
holiday, and half-mad with delight at the sight of a 
flower or a butterfly ; poetry of the present in the 
work and toil of these acres of dull bricks and mortar, 
where everybody, man, woman, and child, is a worker 
in this England without a * leisure class ' ; poetry in 
the thud of the steam engine and the white trail of 
steam from the tall sugar refinery, in the blur-eyes of 
the Spitalfields weaver, or the hungering faces of the 
group of labourers clustered from morning till night 
round the gates of the docks and watching for the 
wind that brings the ships up the river ; poetry in its 
past, in strange old-fashioned squares, in quaint gabled 
houses, in grey village churches that have been caught 
and over-lapped and lost as it were in the great human 
advance that has carried London forward from White- 
chapel, its limit in the age of the Georges, to Stratford, 
its bound in that of Victoria." 

He proceeds to speak of Stepney as it was in the 
days when Erasmus came here to enjoy fresh air with 
Colet in the country house belonging to the Dean of 
St. Paul's. The poetry embodied in every human 
being blends with the poetry which revivifies the past 
for the historian. Green indeed felt keenly the weary 
monotony of the wilderness " of dull bricks and 
mortar." He would sometimes take a tiring walk 
as far as Mayfair to have the relief of seeing 
ranges of houses with at least a broken skyline. It 
weighed upon his spirits, though he could solace him- 
self by seeing in actual London a continuation of the 



n CLERICAL CAREER 6i 

ancient town, and he devoted a large part of his time 
to his historical studies. He spent his mornings in the 
library of the British Museum, and lived with ancient 
monks as well as with modern district visitors. He 
had left Oxford with the intention of writing lives 
of the Archbishops of Canterbury ; a plan carried out 
about the same time by Dean Hook. A letter to 
Professor Dawkins will explain why this scheme was 
abandoned, and was by degrees superseded in favour 
of a history of the Angevin Kings of England. He 
began to study ancient ecclesiastical history, and spent 
some tirne upon St. Patrick, till he felt that his igno- 
rance of the Irish language disqualified him for the 
task. Two other plans occupied him for a time. He 
had proposed to write a history of Somerset, in collab- 
oration with his friend. Professor Dawkins. This, it 
appears, was to go back to the inhabitants of Wookey 
Hole, if not to remoter geological periods. It would 
have partly anticipated the Victorian county-history. 
The task would have been beyond the strength of the 
two young men, and the refusal of a publisher to accept 
the book, fortunately, as they soon perceived, put a 
stop to it. 

With Professor Dawkins he was also concerned in a 
college magazine called the Druid. The first number 
of this appeared at Easter 1862. The college author- 
ities intimated to Professor Dawkins, as ostensibly the 
editor, that young men would, in their opinion, be 
more fitly occupied in learning than in teaching. The 
admonition was taken as a challenge, and a second 
number appeared, which cost the undertakers X^5> 
and was naturally the last. Green's part in it deserves 
notice. The Druid opens with a notice of Henry 
Vaughan,. the " Silurist," a member of Jesus ; and the 
opening pages contain a sketch of the college history. 



62 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

A letter signed "J. R. G." sets forth the programme 
to be carried out. The greatest want of the college is 
a " want of traditions." Its members should investi- 
gate the history of previous Welsh foundations in 
Oxford, and proceed to the history of its great men. 
Then they should do their best to get rid of the false 
shame with which Jesus men often regarded their 
country, and investigate Welsh history, language, and 
literature. Finally, they should inquire what the pres- 
ent college actually did for the benefit of the Welsh 
nation. He does not say explicitly, though he obviously 
holds, that the answer to his query would not have been 
satisfactory. Green contributes three out of nine articles 
to the second number of the Druid, and one of these 
upon " Oxford Before and After the Conquest," repro- 
duced as " The Early History of Oxford " in his Stray 
Studies, shows how vigorously he was already working 
up to his favourite subject. The Druid, if it were to 
aim at such a high mark, was not likely to be satisfac- 
torily kept up by members of a small college. 

Another piece of early work had more important 
consequences. He had made a special study of Dunstan, 
and had prepared a paper which was read before the 
meeting of the Somersetshire Archaeological Society at 
Wellington in August 1862. Freeman was present, 
and prepared to give " a fair hearing " to the young 
and unknown clergyman. The knowledge and literary 
power displayed in the paper took him altogether by 
surprise. Suddenly it flashed upon him that the 
speaker was little " Johnnie Green " of whom he had 
taken notice at Magdalen School. He introduced 
himself after the paper, and a friendship began, which 
materially affected Green's later career. 

Green's account of Dunstan, as Freeman says, showed 
that his powers were already fully developed. It was 



II CLERICAL CAREER 63 

" a noble defence of a noble and slandered man," and, 
moreover, implied a careful sifting and weighing of all 
the available evidence. It proved, that is, what some 
later critics failed at first to perceive, that Green could 
investigate the original sources thoroughly as well as 
make brilliant summaries of history. Freeman recog- 
nised in Green a worthy fellow-worker in his own 
field. He had recently made the acquaintance of 
Professor Dawkins, who had brought Green to Well- 
ington, and the friendship was consolidated by this 
additional tie. Freeman not only became a friend, but 
took a natural pride in his brilliant young admirer. 
His feeling towards Green seems to have partaken of 
a sense of intellectual proprietorship. He made it 
a duty, he says, from that time " to blow Green's 
trumpet " upon every opportunity. He generously 
acknowledged, too, the lights which he had himself 
received from his friend. " I myself," he remarks, 
" owe the deepest obligations to Green's interest in 
municipal history. Green's gift of catching both the 
leading features in the topography and in the history 
of a town was wonderful. Whatever I have tried to 
do in that way, I have learnt from him." Green, on 
his side, could blow Freeman's trumpet very effectively, 
and fully appreciated the importance of Freeman's work 
in raising the standard of English historical research. 
He became acquainted with other workers in the same 
cause ; especially with Dr. Stubbs, the late Bishop of 
Oxford, and with Mr. Bryce, who made his mark about 
this time by his essay on the Holy Roman Empire 
(1864). 

Freeman soon showed the value which he set upon 
Green's opinion by consulting him upon points of 
history ; and they came to exchange a good deal of 
frank criticism. This rather dangerous practice did 



64 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

not interfere with their mutual regard ; though the 
strong contrast, both of character and intellect, between 
the two, gave rise to certain difficulties. Freeman, as 
his biographer intimates, was a little annoyed at times 
by what he considered as impulsive and imaginative 
escapades, very uncongenial to his own methodical 
habits. He used, however, to regard them as "Johnnie 
Green's way," and to reflect that his man of genius 
must not be judged by the standard applicable to the 
ordinary human being. On the other hand. Freeman's 
mode of criticising Green's writings and behaviour could 
not be always agreeable to a singularly sensitive nature. 
Freeman, whatever his other merits, was certainly not 
conspicuous for the tact which disarms even sharp 
criticism of its sting. It is, however, needless to 
insist upon superficial peculiarities of taste and temper, 
which never seriously interfered with the strongest 
personal regard and most cordial appreciation of 
intellectual ability on both sides. 

Stubbs first met him in the train in 1863, when they 
were both on their way to stay with Freeman for 
another meeting of the Somersetshire Society. He 
noticed that Green had in his hand a volume of 
Renan ; and resolved to put a stop to that dangerous 
study. He therefore borrowed the book ; and when 
Green asked for its return, it had been safely deposited, 
with leaves uncut, in a waste-paper basket. Stubbs 
describes his own part in this simple-minded manoeuvre 
in his lectures.^ Green was amused, and probably able 
to procure another copy. In spite of such little col- 
lisions they remained, as Stubbs says, on the friendliest 
terms for twenty years. 

Green was gradually preparing for his historical 
work during the early years of his clerical career. 

^ See Stubbs's Lectures on the Study of Mediceval and Modern History. 



II CLERICAL CAREER 65 

He was, however, interrupted for a time by another 
occupation. The demands upon his very modest 
income were excessive ; he was as he says often on 
the verge of bankruptcy ; and he was forced to eke 
out his means by bringing his pen to market. At 
this time Freeman was one of the very distinguished 
band of contributors, whom J. D. Cook had recruited 
for the Saturday Review. In that paper, playfully 
described as the " Reviler," he blew the trumpet 
of Dr. Stubbs, Dr. Guest, Mr. Bryce, and Green, 
and justified the alternative title by persistent ex- 
posures of Froude's inaccuracy. At their first meet- 
ing Freeman suggested that Green should write in the 
paper; but it was not till later that he introduced 
Green to Cook, who at once recognised the value of the 
new writer. Cook indeed was anxious, as will appear, 
to give more work than Green was able to undertake. 
From the spring of 1867 till the end of 1872, Green 
wrote many articles; and a few appeared in , the next 
two years. Green had a singular facility in turning 
out such work. Mr. Loftie says that he would take 
great pains in revising or rewriting his brilliant 
passages, but he must often have written at full 
speed. He told a friend who was staying with him 
that he had to write three articles in thirty-six hours. 
One was a review of a volume by Freeman, a second 
a " light middle," while a third dealt with the history 
of an English town. He had got them all into 
shape, he added, during his walks that day about 
London streets. He finished the first about two in 
the morning, while talking to his friend, and the other 
two were done the next day. We are elsewhere told 
that Green often sat down, after a day passed in 
the museum and in parish work, and finished an 
article between 12 and 2 a.m. He even speaks of 



66 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

writing from 2 to 5. The practice of night work 
is seductive, but the strain upon a man, already 
threatened with dangerous disease, must have been 
excessive. Green, as will be seen, thought that this 
occupation, recommended by financial reasons, was not 
a mere waste of energy. The friend who describes 
the composition of the three articles defends him 
from the charge of "journalism," against which he 
always protested himself. By "journalism" is to 
be understood, I suppose, writing for pay upon 
matters of which you are ignorant. Most of Green's 
articles are unassailable upon this ground. Many of 
them are serious reviews of historical work by a 
competent critic ; others are independent historical 
essays ; and others again are valuable discussions of 
the lessons impressed upon him by the great problem 
of East End pauperism. His articles, says Mr. 
Bryce, were " among the best, perhaps the very best," 
which were then appearing in the paper. Some, in 
particular those upon the history of towns, were 
" masterpieces." Green collected some of them in 
1876 in his Stray Studies from England and Italy. 
The volume also includes specimens of the "light 
middle," the short essay which intervened between 
the political articles and the reviews of books. They 
reveal a fresh side of Green's singularly versatile 
nature. Retiring to his study from the worry and 
strain of other occupations, he relieved himself by 
throwing off hasty sketches of the curates and district 
visitors with whom he had associated. Though per- 
fectly good humoured, and doing full justice to the 
merits of the persons concerned, the articles show 
also a very keen eye for the comic aspects of the 
human species described. Other articles, which at- 
tracted a good deal of notice at the time, show that 



II CLERICAL CAREER 67 

his social sympathies were not confined to the East 
End. He tells Freeman (in March 1876) that he 
took one of the collected articles called " Children by 
the Sea " to be his best bit of literary work. This 
little sketch shows his characteristic love of children, 
and its artistic skill will, I think, lead many readers to 
agree with his judgment. According to Mr. Loftie, 
he expressed a similar opinion about another article 
called the " Buttercup." Buttercup is, it seems, a name 
for a girl just emerging from the schoolroom into 
society. Freeman was amusingly scandalised by these 
performances. Green, he said, was in his place when 
speaking of history or of East End pauperism ; but 
he had no right to discourse of young ladies and 
Guardsmen, and the ethics of flirtation. Green's ex- 
perience in this sphere must, of course, have been 
limited ; but it is plain that if his opportunities were 
not great, his power of using them was remarkable. 
All his friends speak of the singular brilliancy of his 
conversation, and attribute it partly to the vivacity 
and alertness of his intellect, and the readiness with 
which mere statements of fact grouped themselves in 
his mind into vivid pictures. But it also implied the 
quick sympathy of an exquisitely sensitive nature. If 
he could appreciate Freeman's historical dissertations, 
he could enjoy the charm of naive simplicity in 
women and children. The claims of women to equality 
in politics and education were then provoking a good 
deal of satire, some of it harsh enough. Green's 
articles upon contemporary feminine types show his 
sense of the comic side, united with a genuine 
sympathy for the feminine enthusiast who might be 
misdirected by ignorance. Green had in fact oppor- 
tunities of. observing beyond the region of district 
visitors. He was especially welcome in the family of 



68 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Mr. von Glehn, a German gentleman, who lived at 
Peak Hill, Sydenham. His house was the meeting- 
place of many men of literary and artistic distinction. 
Among them were Sir George Grove, Mr. Holman 
Hunt, and Emmanuel Deutsch, who sprang into fame 
by his article upon the Talmud in 1867. Green also 
won the lasting friendship of Mr. von Glehn's daughters, 
who were then growing up to womanhood. One of 
them became the wife of Dr. Creighton, the late Bishop 
of London. Some letters to her and to her sister 
Miss (Olga) von Glehn will show the pleasant relations 
which existed between him and the von Glehns. 

Green's Saturday Review articles, as Mr. Gell con- 
jectures, implied a kind of feverish reaction from the 
strain of his many occupations. In any case, parish 
work, historical research, and journalism all carried on 
together were too much for a constitution which had 
already shown serious symptoms of weakness. It is 
surprising that his nervous energy should have carried 
him on so long, and not strange that he should 
have retired with broken health and with spirits often 
depressed. At times he complained that his work 
had been inevitably a failure. The Church could not 
discharge its proper function of civilising the masses. 
The parson, he said, cannot get into really close con- 
tact with the poor. " Their life is not his life, nor 
their ways his ways." His isolation from the most 
numerous and popular church parties, and his growing 
dissatisfaction with the orthodox creed, made him feel 
his difficulties too more keenly, while the state of his 
health gave an important reason for retirement. When 
reheved from the strain, his spirits revived ; and he 
resolved to concentrate his strength upon the historical 
work for which his powers were most thoroughly 
adapted. 



II CLERICAL CAREER 69 

Although Green was a born historian, without special 
predilection for abstract speculation, he had strong con- 
victions upon religious questions of which something 
must be said. His health gave a more than sufficient 
reason for his abandonment of an active clerical career. 
It is also true, as the letters will show, that the position 
was becoming untenable upon other grounds. The 
Newman influence at Oxford had passed away, and, 
during his university career, he was more or less attracted 
by the Evangelicals. His first curacy was under an 
incumbent of that way of thinking. It seems, however, 
that the' Evangelicism was more superficial than the 
previous Anglicanism. He was at any rate on friendly 
terms and, up to a certain point, in sympathy with 
members of the " Broad Church " party, of which his 
friend Stanley was a leading member. His liberalism 
naturally extended from politics to theology, and in 
the various controversies of the period, arising from the 
publication of Essays and Reviews, and the writings of 
Colenso and others, he was emphatically on the side of 
the rationalising party. The letter upon Huxley's con- 
test with Wilberforce shows that he already sympathised 
with science as against theological dogmatists. Another 
letter written to Professor Dawkins (in April 1862) 
shows that at one time it occurred to him to contrib- 
ute to the voluminous literature upon the relations of 
Christianity to science. He is a sincere believer in 
Christianity, but holds that where theological and scien- 
tific ideas conflict, the theological will have to give 
way. 

This scheme for an exposition of his views apparently 
represents a momentary impulse. Green's power was 
not to be shown in such controversies. Meanwhile, 
however, he felt painfully that he was cut off from 
many of his fellows. "A young Liberal clergyman," 



yo LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

he writes in 1863, "has to pass, above all, in this part 
of town and in the country, through the fire and water 
of utter isolation. Highs and Lows have their gather- 
ings, their conferences ; know one another, comfort one 
another, strengthen one another. But the Liberal must 
eat the bread of solitude ! He has no gathering, no 
Margaret Street, no Exeter Hall. There may be, must 
be, other heretics in the world, but he does not know 
them, and he has no means of knowing them. He 
proceeds to suggest some Association of the Liberals 
which might issue manifestoes, and perhaps have a reg- 
ular organ in the press. Green had a few like-minded 
friends, of whom Mr. Stopford Brooke and Mr. H. 
R. Haweis were at this time the most intimate. They 
met occasionally at the " C. C. C," or Curates' Clerical 
Club, intended to promote a free discussion of Church 
questions. Maurice, Stanley, and others occasionally 
looked in at these meetings. They gradually drooped, 
however, and nothing came of Green's proposed Asso- 
ciation. 

Green's religious sentiment was deep and permanent. 
The spiritual life of the mystics, the " religion of the 
heart," which subordinates dogmas and historical matter 
of fact to the emotions, was entirely congenial to him. 
His friend, Mrs. Ward, had, as we have seen, found 
solace under many anxieties in the quietism of Mme. 
Guyon. A volume of the letters would lie by her side 
with a heap of darning. Green fully sympathised with 
her religious attitude, and spoke of it to the end with 
affectionate reverence. But his singularly keen intellect 
and ardent interest in historical and scientific inquiries 
made him accept the fundamental principle of rationalism. 
The results of free and full inquiry must be accepted 
without reserve or compromise. He was for a time 
attracted by the personal charm of F. D. Maurice, whose 



II 



CLERICAL CAREER 71 



interest in the great social questions would supply 
another reason for sympathy. But Maurice's peculiar 
method of combining a mystical tendency with an 
acceptance of the orthodox creeds and history could 
not be satisfactory to a clear-headed thinker. It was 
impossible for Green to hold with Maurice that the 
framers of the Thirty-nine Articles had somehow pre- 
cisely expressed the ultimate truths of religion. He 
knew the origin of that document too well. Nor 
could he continue to hold with " Broad Church- 
men " that it was right at once to admit that the 
formularies represented obsolete dogmas and exploded 
history, and yet to accept them by help of some uncon- 
scious equivocation. He was keenly alive to the danger 
of being tempted by his position into insincerity. His 
genuine affection for the Church, as well as his main 
material interests, might betray him in that direction. 
He resolved that, if he should be unable at any time 
to use the words of the Litany, " Christ, have mercy 
upon us," with perfect sincerity, he would abandon the 
clerical character. When the time came he acted upon 
his resolution. He was glad, however, that the state 
of his health, which gave a sufficient reason for the step, 
made it unnecessary to set forth the other ground. 
Indeed, he had some thought, even after his resignation, 
of undertaking clerical duties, though it soon became 
clear that this would be impossible. He had at all 
times a horror of saying anything which would shock 
the feelings and disturb the faith of simple believers. 
He not only respected their sensibilities, but with his 
singularly quick powers of sympathy could show that he 
shared their emotions. He never tended, therefore, to 
materialism, or identified the religious principle with 
the obsolete dogmas historically associated with it. He 
admitted the possibility that for some persons the 



72 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

spiritual life might cast off the accretions, and be as 
vigorous as ever. I need not speak of the difficulties 
of such a position. They were fully felt by Green, and 
he did not purpose to offer any new solution. 



To W. Boyd Dawkins 

March 14, 186 1. 

[Mark Anthony Lower (18 13-1876) was secretary 
to the Sussex Archaeological Society, and published 
many antiquarian works. Gideon Algernon Manteil 
(1790-1852), a well-known geologist, lived at Lewes 
till 1839. See Diet, Nat. Biog.'\ 

My dear Dax — If I were not your debtor already 
I should owe you a letter now to thank you for 
your kind invitation to my brother. On arrival at 
Lewes I was welcomed by my two cousins, young girls, 
full of fun and talk, with whom I talked fun until 
eleven. I fancy they got a little tired at last of the 
outrageous rubbish I poured out, though they could 
not help laughing on ; but I had resolved not to end 
till I felt tired enough to be sure of falling asleep 
the moment I jumped into bed. In the service next 
morning I omitted the Psalms bodily, and preached 
extempore — both of which proceedings electrified my 
cousins' congregation. The former, however, intro- 
duced me to a Mr. Lower, the genius and antiquarian 
of the place, who has a penchant for liturgical reform, 
and fancied my omission to have been intentional. 
Though disappointed on this point by my candid 
confession of forgetfulness, he conveyed me the next 
morning over the old castle, and from the top of the 
keep pointed out the battlefield on the downs. A 
gleam of sunlight lit up the edge of the Wealden, 
and brought back the thought of you. Lower had 
known Manteil, who resided at Lewes, and had a little 
smattering of geology himself. Our conversation 
turned on the " Celt " question, and as he was sceptical 



II CLERICAL CAREER 73 

I promised him your notes on the discovery in Wookey, 
a promise which I hope you will perform for your 
sponsor's credit. A kind note from Stanley offering 
me a curacy, welcomed me home. I was glad to find 
Mrs. Ward returned ; her womanly tact discovered that 
all was not well, and without inquiry she petted me into 
good spirits. I spent the bulk of yesterday pounding 
at Dunstan in the British Museum. I shall begin 
my Hist. Somerset there to-day. I have routed up 
Cuthbert, and am throwing him into a paper for some 
magazine. My Oxford papers I intend now complet- 
ing, the work will amuse me, and will pay its ex- 
penses. ' What a grand friend Work is ! 

By-the-bye can you tell me of a good map of 
Somerset, of less size than our unwieldy Ordnance 
Gentleman, yet minute enough for my purposes? The 
country below Lewes, once a seamarsh, now flat 
meadow-land intersected with dykes, brought back 
Glastonbury, and to complete the resemblance there 
are the same rounded hillocks with endings in " eye " 
which point to a time when they stood like Godneye, 
isolated spots amid the waters. I saw Rolleston and 
Daubeny nominated as your examiners for the Scholar- 
ship. I am glad you will thus be brought across the 
latter. His wide acquaintance with Scientific " Swells " 
would enable him to be of most essential service to 
you, if he chose. Although there is Httle doubt of the 
matter, it will be a " white day " for me when I see 
you gazetted as Scholar. It will be the " beginning of 
the end." I can fancy no happier lot than a quiet 
little parsonage, with income to let me scribble as I 
please, and offer a breath of rural air to you or Dobbs 
when you could spare a moment from the rush of 
science or politics. If you will promise this I will 
remain Bachelor to the end of my days. 

You will not, I am sure, forget how pleasant an 
arrival the postman's is now. Good-bye, my dear 
Dawkins.-; — Believe me ever, your sincere friend, 

J. R. Green. 



74 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

1861. 

[The " Dunstan " is, I presume, the paper read 
next year at Wellington.] 

My dear Dax — A note from my brother this 
morning reminds me of my delay in forwarding you 
the " mem. de Colle Mendipsiense." A glance at 
your paper of instructions makes me despair. How- 
ever, I will do my best at the British Museum to-day 
— as soon as a refractory infant, who insists on being 
christened at 12.30, will give me leave of absence. 

I wish you a very pleasant excursion through next 
week. If the weather in Somerset at all approaches 
"Jovem Middlesaxonicum," you will exhibit very 
strong traces of Diluvial action on your return. I 
can't of course guess at your plan of operations, 
whether you will merely make a rush along the range 
(in which case I don't care a rush for your pro- 
ceedings, and desire to hear nothing more of them), 
or whether you will examine the cave — open a Barrow, 
etc., etc. Barrows, I for myself think solemn hum- 
bugs — pretending to an antiquity which really reaches, 
no farther back than the later Roman Empire. But 
the Cave, and its Celts, if rightly worked, might really 
throw a flood of light on the field which science will 
have to delve in for the next half century, the period 
of Man's origines. A cool semi-sceptical head like 
Howard's would be invaluable in such an investigation. 
Accuracy in noting all the circumstances beyond reach 
of cavil would be of course indispensable. I don't 
suppose that word of mine would influence your 
arranged plans, but interesting as " the anticlinal axis 
of Old Red," " the flexures and dips " of the Mendip 
range may be, Man and Man's History to my mind 
is worth them all. Nihil geologicum a me alienuum putOy 
but still Trilobites and Echini are only Kingcrabs and 
Starfishes, while Man is Man. 



II 



CLERICAL CAREER 75 



I spent yestreen at the Crystal Palace with the Lady 
(have I told you of her ? ) who denied the existence of 
the various Hawkins-cum-Owens animals which adorn 
its grounds, and assured me that Dr. Buckland, on 
whom she charged the paternity of such naughty 
delusions, died of Insanity in consequence. I thanked 
her for the information, as it corrected the general 
impression that his death was caused by a decayed 
bone at the base of his head, but ventured to inquire 
her grounds for denying the existence of these crea- 
tures, and even the possibilityof their existence. "My 
dear Mr. Green, think how ugly they were." I 
bowed, and owned that this convincing argument had 
not struck me. 

" Dunstan " is finished. " Fine, plucky little chap," 
shall be his epitaph. His diminutive size makes me 
sympathetic with him. I don't care a straw for heroes 
of six feet. This is the great blot in Columba's 
character — whose hagiology I am exploring now. He 
is a magnificent fellow — but too tall by a foot — but 
then he could get into a sublime rage ! That's what 
I like in these older S. S. The devotees of the 
later hagiology could fast and weep and whimper, but 
they could not get into one of S. Columba's grand 
wrath-explosions. Puir deils ! T. Owen writes most 
happily. He has fought for the Truth, and the 
Truth has made him free from the petty cares and 
troubles of lives like ours. Nevertheless we have our 
work to do, — Truth in History — Truth in Geology. 
Each is but a part of that great circle of the Truth of 
God. May He bless and keep you ever. — Yours in 
all friendship, J. R. Green. 

To M. M. 

April 1 86 1. 

In the country there is no excuse for remissness in re 
literaria^ — it is the only charm against the devil. 
Excuse there might be for me, — breakfasting at 8 and 
snatching half an hour of Stanley's book over my bread 



76 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

and butter, — then hurrying from morning prayer at St. 
Matthew's to open the school and confer with my vicar ; 
letter and lecture-writing, visiting and the etceteras of 
the day till 12; then, after luncheon, a walk to the 
British Museum and grind there till 4.30 ; dinner and 
a trot home ; tea at the parsonage ; a chat with Mrs. 
W.; a romp with the children till the parish again 
claims me from 7 to 9 for lectures, Bible classes, music 
do., confirmation do., committee meetings, and the like. 
A good two hours' reading or sermon-writing sends 
me to bed at 12. But you idle bucolic, what are 
you doing ? Frittering yourself away, I fear, on little 
things, little social successes, little parsonic victories, 
little industries, little idlenesses. This is worse than 
our waste of those precious years at Oxford. Brace 
yourself, my dear M., to better things, worthier things, 
than these. Look at that httle fellow Dawkins, God 
bless him ! warmer heart and cooler head never balanced 
one another than in him, — but look at what he has 
done by sheer steady work, and blush ! You used to 
laugh at my opus magnum^ — but it was just what we 
both needed, an end to which to work and a big end. 
It is looking up now. Materials are coming together. 
The saints are huddhng in the pages of my notebook, 
expecting a resurrection in octavo. Only my Somerset 
stops the way, and that will be launched in a year, 
putting, I hope, a cool hundred or two in D.'s pocket 
and mine. D. declares I first woke him to the con- 
sciousness of what was in him. I should like to wake 
you too. One thing you could do and well. Select 
and translate some of that immense music of Welsh 
songs which you are so fond of. People are beginning 
to wake to the value of national poetry. Your country 
has stores of sacred hymns. Select and translate as 
Miss Winkworth has translated Luther, and in her 
Lyra Germanica. Publish your Lyra Celtica. Don't 
die down without a struggle into a rustic celebrity, — a 
Welsh parson. You are one of my set, and my set 
must be more than that. 



II CLERICAL CAREER 77 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

London, April \6, 1861. 

My dear Dax — The mistake about Ferguson is — 
I still persist in thinking — your own. Ferguson has 
published, I believe, a big book and a little book. 
However, your choice is right, and I expect to learn 
much on Byzantine architecture when I see you next. 
Your letter came at the very nick of time ; for your 
quitting me induced my first fit of depression since my 
curate life commenced, — and of course troubles were 
not slow'to flock in. I lent, in my unsuspicious fashion, 
the Quarterly to Mrs. Ward, and when I came to chat 
over it found them frantically exultant in its smash of 
Essays and Reviews. I said truly enough that the only 
article I cared about was one on " Dogs," — but I was 
dragged into the discussion, and then there was nothing 
for it but to speak frankly and declare the article " un- 
fair," and the bosh by no means so black as it was 
painted. The vicar preached last Sunday on " Modern 
Infidelity." At supper 1 was asked if 1 knew anything 
of that atheist Pattison, whose election to Lincoln was 
the theme of conversation. " No, — I knew nothing of 
such a person." "Well, that infidel Pattison," — so I 
had to look straight at Ward and reply that from what 
I had read of Pattison''s I believed the charge of 
infidelity to be wholly without foundation. I think it 
very creditable to Ward that he made no remark, and 
is as cordial as ever, or even more so. Don't think I 
am growing controversial. If you knew my horror at 
controversy, you would appreciate the pain I feel at such 
an approach to it as I have already made. But I can 
see the storm gathering against Neologians as it gathered 
of old against Puseyism, and I know well if it breaks 
out as it did then I must submit to be misunderstood 
and rejected by both sides. " Oh, pray for the peace 
of Jerusalem." Don't think me superstitious for the 
intense joy with which I read the words yesterday. 



78 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

"They shall prosper that love Thee." Or those glori- 
ous words in the Psalms of to-day. " Behold, how 
good and joyful a thing it is, brethren, to dwell to- 
gether in unity." This is most on my mind, — so 
pardon my bothering you with it. To turn to other 
matters. All the " choral" opposition has vanished. 
The young men have behaved well and honestly, so I 
am on the point of establishing, with great hope of 
success, a " Young Men's Association," with a room 
open every night for reading papers and periodicals, 
magazines and books ; playing chess, draughts, back- 
gammon ; a nucleus on which we can group lectures 
and classes for various kinds of instruction, choral and 
otherwise. You must not forget to send me your 
Athenaum^ I will see that it is not injured, and to ask 
Dobbs and others who may chance to " take in " 
periodicals, etc., to give us a temporary reversion of them. 
In a short time, when our bark is fully launched, I hope 
to get on without these swaddling clothes. 

I shall not be able to call on the Boyds or on any one 
else for the whole of this week, as my whole morning 
and afternoon are occupied in the vestry and parish, 
dispensing relief to the poor, so that I think I will wait 
till you visit London again. I won't enter on Jesus 
topics, as they are totally without interest to either of us ; 
but I note in your letter an ominous silence in re X. 
Don't let his morbid ill-humour prevent your inter- 
course, if he is up this term. He is the most difficult 
fellow to get on with I have ever come across, — but 
much even of this difficulty sprung from his intense 
love of truth and fairness, and this is so rare amongst 
the " Jesus fry " that one is bound not to let a ridicu- 
lous irritability, arising not from character, but from 
ill-health, stand in the way of one's appreciation of it. 
If he is up, will you put down to my bill at Parker's 
Maurice on the Gospel of S. John^ and give it to him 
from me ? He promised to read it, and I feel it will do 
him good if he reads it with a sneer. I should like, 
above all things, to run down to Oxford, but how to 



II CLERICAL CAREER 79 

manage it I see not. However, I don't yet despair. — 
Believe me, my dear Dax, yours most sincerely, 

J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

King's Square, 
Jpril 1 86 1. 

Dear, dear Old Dax — I hope so soon to be with 
you that were it not for the selfish pleasure I take in 
a chat with you, I need hardly be writing now. I 
intend coming down on Monday morning for a week's 
stay in Oxford. Don't pray call me idle for so long 
a holiday. It all comes of that tempter the British 
Museum Library. Close work there, and no exercise, 
have — with a few cares and troubles which you need 
not be reminded of — entirely bowled me over. A 
cold has completed my discomfiture. I feel that it is 
taxing your kindness not a little to ask you to enter- 
tain a broken-down curate with a cold and headache 
hanging about him, for a week. But it will be a good 
test of your capacity for either of the two professions 
between whose respective charms you are hesitating. 

I defer till our interview all talk about Somerset, 
your travels — our book — or the "res lonesii Ecclesise" 
which I have not forgotten. We can then chat more 
at large over your choice of a profession. You know 
my wishes already. But don't vex yourself about the 
future. ... As to what is to become of you in the 
future, you need fash yourself very little. Even in 
the lowest sense, work and head pay in the world. 
In a higher sense we can rest very quietly, not idly, 
till the clouds are cleared away for us. It is just the 
restlessness about our future, this want of faith, to 
speak plainly, that makes our way seem so hard in 
life. Do you remember how anxiously I looked 
forward to the concomitants of my clerical life, and 
even did not know all my apprehensions at the chance 
of meeting a " hard " vicar — working in fetters, and 
the like. Well, look how happy I am here — over- 



8o LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

petted, I daresay, but revelling in this home sunshine. 
Would it not have been wiser for me to have done 
my work and left the future to a wisdom higher than 
mine ? 

Pardon my little sermon, dear Dax, it is preached 
rather to myself than to you. It is really preached 
at my anxieties about the future of my opinions — 
church-theories, and the like. Where am I drifting 
to ? Will not the stone fall some day on me ? These 
are the questions which will rise up. To work fear- 
lessly, to follow earnestly after Truth, to rest with a 
childlike confidence in God's guidance, to leave one's 
lot willingly and heartily to Him — this is my sermon 
to myself. If we could live more within sight of 
Heaven we should care less for the turmoil of earth. 
While we remain mere ministers of the Church of 
England we must be afraid of our neighbours' ill-will, 
of accusations of atheism, of " ignorant bishops " ; but 
once become a minister of the Church Eternal, and 
the cry of controversy falls unheeded on ears that are 
deaf to all but the Heavenly harpings around the 
Throne. Of course this is what people are ready to 
sneer at — Mysticism. But in the union of Mysticism 
with freedom of thought and inquiry will, I am per- 
suaded, be found the faith of the future. Of this, 
however, more hereafter. — Believe me, yours most 
sincerely, J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

King's Square, 
May 1861. 

Dear old Fellow — I have two pleasant letters of 
yours to reply to, and I think I had better go through 
them seriatim. , . . 

Now for your last little note. Don't get in a rage, 
and call me a coward for what I am going to say. 
What is the meaning of this window to Robertson of 
Brighton ? Is it a counter protest ? Tell me very 
frankly if it is — if it is likely even to be taken so. 



II 



CLERICAL CAREER 8i 



If it be I will have nothing to do with it, much as 
I love and reverence the man. Don't misunderstand 
me. I feel the great temptation of the pleasure of 
seeing myself denounced in the Record. There are 
times when I long for a fight, as when I read for 
instance of the renewed refusal of Jowett's just claims 
to a stipend. But speaking calmly I see more and 
more reason for keeping clear of controversy. In a 
mere worldly sense a reply keeps the ball up. When 
Johnson was asked why he did not extinguish the 
petty libels against him by an answer, he said, " There 
is nothing the rascals would like better, but it takes 
two people to play at battledore and shuttlecock, and 
I shan't help them." And in another sense I can't 
afford to fight. Just look at dear little Stanley. See 
how controversy is dragging him down from his natural 
sphere ofthe widest charity — embittering him — though 
one still feels the jar of linking together two such 
names as bitterness and Stanley. I have perfect faith 
in the truth. I don't think it needs defence of ours. 
I do think it needs our silence. The clamour will pass 
away, and not a few will look back on their share 
of it with shame. I don't think we shall have any 
shame in looking back at our silent endeavour. But 
tell me more of Stanley. What is the "row" about 
him — tell me all the particulars. I am most anxious 
to hear about them. You must have guessed what a 
vivid pleasure your pluck in joining his class at this 
moment would give me. Thank you for it, dear 
Dax. — Yours most sincerely, J. R. Green. 



To W. Boyd Dawkins 

June 19, 1 86 1. 

[Arnold is Mr. Thomas Arnold, son of Dr. Arnold, 
and father of Mrs. Humphry Ward.] 

My dear Dax — I have just read with horror at the 
end of your note from the railway station, " I expect 



82 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

a letter on Tuesday." Rusticus expectat ! item with 
double horror in its first page, that my last " was not 
of satisfactory length." My letters are not "strata," 
but rather little patches of rich deposit. You are not 
to rush over them, as you would pace over your own, 
but sit down with sieve and hammer, and find a speci- 
men in every line. 

De libro I your Huxtable success fades before mine. 
At the Bishop's fete I picked up Arnold (quondam 
orator, and Oxford man), now busy reviewing for the 
Literary Gazette^ and contributing to the Gentleman s 
Magazine, etc. He wishes much to make my acquaint- 
ance, and will give us a lift certainly in the Literary 
Gazette, and probably in other quarters, on the appear- 
ance of Somerset. This will sell fifty copies, or perhaps 
double that number. 

Your paper on the relation of Tert. Fossils to the 
Development Theory must be most interesting. I feel 
impatient to see it, although I am resolved not to dabble 
in science, which I have no time to pursue scientifically. 
Dobbs sent me a full and most entertaining account of 
the Yarnton discoveries. At present they seem " date- 
less," but I should fancy that further search, and the 
instructions which Dobbs has given, will furnish some 
clue to the important point. Was it from you ihat I 
learnt that the bit of green metal found turned out a 
part of a Romad fibula, or something of the sort ? If 
so, we have bonies interred in a fashion (crouching) 
characteristic of British or Celtic burial, yet in a Roman 
age. This would confirm my belief that our so-called 
British cairns, etc., date really during the period of 
Roman connection with, or rule over, England, i.e. 
either from the first or second conquest to the close of 
their empire in Britain. My fluctuating health has 
taken a good turn, when all else are waxing pale and 
withery under the Tartarian heat. I will improve 
steadily till you appear. — Believe me, my dear Dax, 
yours most sincerely, J. R. Green. 



II CLERICAL CAREER 83 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

June 26, 1 86 1. 

My dear Dax — Your curator plan seems a very 
excellent one. Perhaps I am prejudiced in its favour 
by the hope of having you so near me. But we can 
talk more about it when we meet. I shall be very happy 
to "receive" you, and if you will tell me the date of 
your arrival will procure you a bed either here or in 
the vicinity. 

You have no doubt seen in the papers an account of 
ye great fire across the Thames. But no account that 
I have seen at all realises its horror. On the Saturday 
night I was at Dr. Stanley's in Belgrave Square. We 
heard rumours of a great fire near London Bridge, and 
saw the clouds above breaking up into fiery islets, with 
gaps of bright blue sky between them. Leaving Stan- 
ley's at eleven, Coxhead and I cabbed away to London 
Bridge. Great streams of people were pouring down 
Cheapside, and as we turned into King William Street 
the great dome of St. Paul's towered all bright with the 
reflected blaze above us, and the top of the monument 
shone out against the dark smoke-clouds that went 
whirling by. The long file of carriages moved step by 
step onwards, and brought us at last to the bridge, 
thronged with a wild excited mob. I shall never for- 
get the sight that broke on my eyes. On the north 
side lay the custom-house, etc., its rows of lamps look- 
ing pale and ghastly in the glare, and behind the long 
rows of buildings stretched away etched out by the vivid 
light of the conflagration. Beneath rolled on the river, 
of a dark slate colour, dotted with thousands of boats, 
each with its reverse side undistinguishable from the 
dark stream, while the side fronting the flames reflected 
a bright white light. On the southern side of the 
Thames a great band of melted oils and fats went slowly 
floating down, burning with an intense white glare 
around the carcases of boats and filth up to the edge 



84 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

of the wharves. From that edge, over a space of five 
or six acres, lay a vast hell of fire. No other word 
would describe it. Dark volumes of heavy smoke 
dipped down and surged upwards over the sea of red 
lurid flame, through which ran lines of vivid white 
light that marked the ranges of burning warehouses. 
And on the outskirts of this awful scene lay a thick 
belt of smoke, parted here and there by fresh swirls of 
flame that leapt ever onward to some new prey; on to a 
fresh range of great stores on the one side; on the other, 
to the old church of St. Olave, whose clock struck mid- 
night quietly as of old in the midst of the "thud-thud" 
of the engines, the songs of the firemen, the excited 
shout and hum of the vast crowd on the bridge. And 
over all brooded a night still, calm, breezeless. Men 
watched in agony the slightest jet of wind that came 
up the river, for there was not one who did not know 
that if the wind freshened all Bermondsey was doomed. 
But the lull continued, as though the angel of destruc- 
tion withheld his hand from this crowning chastisement. 
An interruption here reminds me that I have said 
enough about the fire. A word about our book. There 
is a copy of the Somerset Archaol. Soc. Trans, in the 
British Museum library. They are absolutely necessary 
for me. Is Huxtable a member, or any one else, who 
could lend them ? Tax your memory. I have finished 
Glastonbury, and shall now begin my work in order, 
working in the materials I have gathered as I go on. 
I sketched the opening last night. I found the refer- 
ences at the bottom of the opening page would be to 
Deuteronomy, Michelet's France, the Iliad — a collec- 
tion worthy of my omni-gatherum reading. — Believe 
me, dear Dax, yours very sincerely, J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

King's Square, 
August 23, 1 86 1. 

My DEAR Dax — Many thanks for your letter — 
improved Hke wine by keeping. The best "point" in 



II CLERICAL CAREER 85 

your notes was the dip into the cloud and the rise out 
of it. With your keen eye for scenery and the detail 
of a landscape you will by reading, especially by read- 
ing poetry, obtain in time that power of grouping and 
classifying which makes just the difference between a 
picture and a catalogue. 

Let me hear a little in your next about your geology, 
your success in quarries, any new ideas which have 
started up in your mind. My own, braced by the 
fresh air I too soon relinquished, is brimming over 
with theories and " broad philosophic views," to use 
M.'s scoffing phrase. I have been working very hard 
at the Early Irish Church History — an operation very 
like travelling through a jungle, but still I think likely 
to work up into my Opus satisfactorily. 

At present I am eager about getting my poor school 
children a breath of fresh air ; I mean organising a 
trip to Epping Forest for them. J^ s. d. is the diffi- 
culty, as subscriptions have been very rife among us 
lately here, and our good people are tired. I am 
now trying the bad ones — but I want you to help 
me with half-a-crown (send it in stamps), which 
will enable us to give five poor white-cheeked little 
wretches a day of great enjoyment — I am sure you 
will not refuse. It will be a thank-offering for the 
fine weather. 

I have just had two charming letters, one from 
Trevor Owen who has deferred his M.A. till next 
term in order that he may take it with me, which 
delights me ; another from my brother. The clock 
is striking — I will send a second sheet to-morrow. — 
Yours sincerely, J. R. Green. 



To W. Boyd Dawkins 

King's Square, 
September i6, 1861. 

[Du Chaillu's Explorations in Equatorial Africa 
published in 1861, with accounts of the habits of 



86 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

the gorillas, had been received with much sceptical 
criticism.] 

My dear Dax — Whether you are in debt to me 
or I to you I can't remember. Whichever is the case, 
our silence has lasted so long that I think it comes 
under the statute of limitation, and the creditor is 
debarred even from a right to complain. In your 
last you kindly offered 2s. 6d. towards our fete. I 
found myself in a fearful financial hobble — but my 
good genius came to my rescue, brought me ^i from 
the Miss Boyds, rolled 40 tizzies out of Macphail's 
pockets, extracted 30 bob from D. Castle at Bristol, 
and landed me on the shore of solvency. The day was 
a most delightful one, Epping a real Forest. I shocked 
two prim maiden teachers by starting kiss-in-the-ring ; 
I astonished the Scripture-reader — a really energetic 
fellow — by my energy and decision. ("He didn't 
think Mr. Green had so much in him ! ") I returned 
in triumph with only one child in a ditch, and the 
applause of the parochial mothers, while the children 
extemporised a chorus on their return passage : — 

We've had a happy day — ay — ay — 

We' ve had a happy day — ay — ay 
And for it we're indebted (ter) 

To Mr. Green (with sublime energy). 

The British Association seemed to me a lame affair 
this year, but the opening address by Murchison (so 
far as I could understand it) was very interesting. 
The discovery of the marine formation of coal was 
quite new to me, and solved many questions which had 
of old suggested themselves. Surely his Scottish in- 
vestigations go far to confirm the theories of Lyell as 
to the metamorphic nature of the lower rocks. But 
my geology is rapidly drifting away from me — and yet 
what a glorious science it is — while I plunge deeper 
into historical research. My ecclesiastical studies have 
plunged me into that Irish Bog called the Legends of 
Patrick, and when I shall emerge I know not. I want 



II CLERICAL CAREER 87 

very much to write to Dobbs on the subject, but it is 
in vain I implore you to communicate his direction. 
Do! 

I am rather breaking up again, in spite of cold water 
and early rising, and what is more trouble, my hair is 
coming off in double-quick time. I shall soon be bald 
and be-wigged — well you are such a gorilla. Apropos 
of which the Athenaum has turned round, and is calling 
on Du Chaillu derisively to produce his letters from 
the Gaboon, which must have arrived by this time but 
have never shown up. A more serious grief to me 
has been the severe illness of Mrs. Ward, who, on our 
return from our children's fete^ was attacked with a 
severe internal seizure, whose nature the doctors can 
hardly tell, but which was of a most agonising character. 
She is now happily recovering, but terribly weak and 
pale. I know you laugh at my enthusiasm about her ; 
but it is something for me, too, to have one who loves 
me for my own sake, not as some do, for my head, 
and who gives me, what I have never known — a home. 
It was this — not a wife — that — as you know — I used 
to long for of old, and this God has given me here. 
He has given me something more — an Ideal of Chris- 
tian Womanhood — which hushes and awes my own 
sceptical brain into a silent reverence and love. 

I am looking about for a school for my sister — and 
should be glad for you to make some inquiries {mind 
near London) — then send me the directions of, or 
introductions to, some authorities in re Somersetshire. 
Then let me have those Transactions of the Somerset 
Archaological from your friend. — Believe me sincerely 
yours, J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

King's Square, i86i. 

This starts a day later than I had intended, my dear 
Dax, for yesterday found me too tired with sick visits 
and the like (fevers being very plentiful just now), that 



88 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

I feared to inflict my tedium on you and deferred writ- 
ing till to-day. With but little advantage, for to-day 
finds me spent with a good morning's grind at the 
British Museum over " Roman Bath," and I fear I shall 
be as tedious as ever. 

I have finished Patrick, and flung my Ch. Hist, 
work to the dogs, and taken my final plunge into 
Somerset. I find the Celtic part to be as I conjectured, 
{illegible) if there be such a word, without date I mean. 
A tumulus may be a century older than Caesar, or have 
been thrown up by Cassibelan, or be coeval with Con- 
stantine ; some tumuli are indisputably Roman, not 
merely erected during the Roman occupation by the 
Romano-Britons, but by the Romans themselves ! This 
question in fact is in the sceptical stage, a stage very 
useful to it, but precluding all historical treatment. 

Roman Somerset, on the contrary, I think I can 
treat in great detail and minuteness. Their towns, 
their country houses, their farms, their roads, camps, 
mines, all have left pretty traceable marks of themselves, 
though of the latter, except the tools I have heard of as 
being found in the workings at Mendip, I can find little 
mention. I should be glad if you would make inquiries 
on this point. Ilchester, of which you give so Hudi- 
brastic an account, is a famous Roman station ; don't 
forget always to inquire after old charters, deeds, etc. 
I want, too, the direction of that card at Axbridge; get 
it from Williamson, when you are with him. 

Apropos of W., I am glad to hear of your resump- 
tion of the cave-business. Let me hear of your success 
in re ossia. When are we to become members of the 
Somerset Archaeological Association ? It will be need- 
ful for the Opus, — will it not ? And what sort of a 
reception does your mention of it meet in the country ? 
I should have been glad, unscientific as I am, to have 
heard a little more of your Triassic reformations. It 
would be good practice for you to have to bend your 
pen down to my level, even if it were a little tiresome. 
My own life is so monotonous as to furnish scarcely 



II CLERICAL CAREER 89 

anything for a letter. I had, however, a funny visit the 
other day. There was one fellow — a big chap at school 
— against whom I cherished an undying hate. Common 
injustice on M.'s part threw us a little together, when 
his father's death threw him literally without a penny 
on the world. He disappeared in Devonshire ; I heard 
of him last as an usher, and my heart being touched I 
wrote to him, but my letters remained unanswered. 
The other day he hunted me up in my rooms, bearded, 
bronzed. He had been usher here, there, everywhere — 
he had lived upon twopence a day — he had taught 
himself mathematics — he had paid scores of old debts — 
he was now mad with tic from want of good food, and 
yet stood before me with a coat far better than mine, 
and a certain prospect of j^^oo a year ! The fact was 
that in extremity of want he heard of a great railway 
contractor to whom he could get an introduction, — went 
to him and was told he could have a small place at 
home at once, — " but if you knew surveying I could 
give you employment on a South American line of a 
better sort," — hurried back to his friend, who happened 
to be Captain Dray son. Head of the Surveying Depart- 
ment at Woolwich, with whom he was then staying, 
learnt Survey in a week, and has won his post of ^300 
a year ! Well he deserves to be a millionnaire. 1 was 
struck with the great good which hardship had done 
him, and wondered whether, if want had ever looked me 
so hard in the face, I should be the weak, easily-shut-up- 
able creature I am now. And yet I fag pretty well — 
some seven or eight hours per diem, and my brain was 
never more vigorous. 

I am in dread of being left alone, as both the incum- 
bent and Mrs. W. leave for the seaside in a week or so. 
This to me is a horrible expectation, and I expect great 
dumps, so that your visit in passing through would be 
a great piece of charity. Let me hear soon from you 
in spite of my dilatoriness. — Believe me sincerely yours, 

J. R. Green. 



90 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

To W, Boyd Dawkins 

King's Square, 
October i8, 1861. 

The readiest way of bringing me to Oxford, my 
dear Dax, would be to ascertain for me these particulars. 
1st. Am I of sufficient standing to take my M.A. ? 
(This learn from Gilby or some authority. / don't 
know even the date of my matriculation.) 2nd. If so, 
— what does the degree cost ? — what is requisite ? — and 
what are the degree days ? If you let me know these 
items at once we will hold the first meeting of the 
New Somerset Historical and Geological Association at 
Oxford in a very short time. " The meeting was well 
attended. We were happy to see the Rev. J. R. Green, 
and A. E. Dobbs, Esq., on the platform. The chair 
was taken by the celebrated geologist, W. Boyd 
Dawkins, who, after an inaugural lecture on mud, 
called on the Rev. J. R. Green to read his paper * On 
Roman spoons and on the mode in use at that period 
of locking them up.' Mr. Dobbs, after contesting the 
position of the Rev. Gentleman, and eloquently proving 
that no specimen of a Roman plate basket had ever 
been discovered, exhibited a fragment of a Roman or 
Saxon teapot, the spout and body of which were lost. 
This interesting relic was last exhibited at the ^ Handle 
Festival.' Mr. Dobbs then read a brief paper on the 
phrase ' Does your mother know you are out ? ' which 
he attributed to Deborah, in a copy of whose song, 
preserved in the library of T. C. Dublin, it is found as 
a last triumphant taunt over the unfortunate Sisera. 
Our reporter was here unfortunately overpowered by 
sleep, but has been courteously informed by the chair- 
man that after a vote of thanks to Messrs. Dobbs and 
Green, moved and seconded by the chairman, and a 
vote of thanks to the chairman, moved by Mr. Green 
and seconded by Mr. Dobbs, the meeting ended." But 
what have I to do (I, a John Baptist, — christening East 
End babies in the desert of St. Luke's) with those that 



II CLERICAL CAREER 91 

dwell in kings' houses, St. Audrie, — Brighton, etc. 
What friendship with them who take down the Court 
Guide to ascertain their friends' directions ? I am much 
more at ease among snobs. To find " the centre of a 
large circle" at Brighton or elsewhere has an odour of 
Euclid Bk. in. about it, which is eminently disagree- 
able to the unmathematical. 1 cant " cultivate " centres 
(though my Incumbent complains of my tendency to 
cultivate Dmenters). Seriously, however, my dear 
Dax, I rejoiced much over your triumphs. They roll 
on grandly like those Homeric beggars of whom 
Diomed kills a dozen in a line. I shall tie my cockle- 
boat to the big ship Dawkins Ai, and let it tow me 
into harbour. Throw us a rope, old card, it won't 
hinder you much, you know. 

You see my spirits have returned, spite of my 
Incumbent's absence, and the presence of a sore throat. 
In fact an adorer hinted that the great " hindrance to 
my ministerial success " was my tendency to laugh. 
Still it is awfully dull, the " idea " being away, and my 
head having been too ill the greater part of this week 
to read. Left alone as I am I have little leisure for 
work, but I hope to bring you down the Introduction, 
Early Belgic, and Roman periods of our Opus. I 
suppose all you have to do now is to throw the stores 
you have collected into shape, a task more tedious 
than it seems. Did you ascertain from W. the name 
of that publisher at Bath who sent him that offer, or 
of that Axbridge Quaker ? 

I suppose you know all about B.'s disappointment — 
his success in obtaining an appointment and subsequent 
rejection by the medical referees. It is a great blow 
to him, and he seems thoroughly thrown on his beam- 
ends. I have advised him to seek your counsel if up 
at Oxford. He is, I still think, a very different 
fellow from the Welsh ruck of Jesus, and perhaps this 
may be a turning-point in his life. He seems to have 
a tendency towards Geology — perhaps he would read 
with you for the Phys. Science School, if he has time 



92 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

enough, for classics are out of the question. — Believe 
me, my dear Dax, yours very sincerely, 

J. R. Green. 



To W. Boyd Dawkins 

November 28, 1861. 

My dear Dax — Good news and bad news, worried 
and pleased, I want to have a chat with you. Last — a 
she-worry, our lady organist here, has been making me 
" a monster unto many," by twisting my jokes into 
earnest, till people believe my earnest a joke. I was 
awfully riled for five minutes, fancying it very awful to 
be thought a hypocrite ; but that fancy is wearing off, 
and I find the imputation not nearly as uncomfortable 
to bear as might be expected. The only wonder to me 
is how the ''''good people" live. To have to rise at 
8, and not lie down till 10, and walk about all 
day with a terror about the slightest crack in your 
spotless reputation — your ears tingling with a pre- 
vision of the howl that would greet your fall, the sighs 
and groans and lamentations of the other " good 
people " who must have a fling at you to show that 
they are in no danger of a similar lapse, this beats 
Blondin. Whereas I walk whistling along, secure in 
having no character to lose, and conscious that if I were 
to pick a pocket people would only say drily, "Just 
what we expected," and " Pass by on the other side." 

And now, sick of " I " and jumping over " O," 
one comes to " U." How are U .? U found your 
journey a success, and came back with the two 
preceding vowels Triumphe, did you ? Accept my con- 
gratulations. I have paid your Pastoral Aid subscrip- 
tion of ;^i : I : o (" no gentleman subscribes a pound ") 
to our treasurer, in order to have a distinct motive 
for heartily wishing to see you in Town. The move 
succeeded, and I have a strong desire to look upoa 
your face again. 



II CLERICAL CAREER g^ 

Write at once^ and let me know whether D. is through. 
If those examiners knew him, I would defy them to 
pluck him. He would just say, " How d'ye do ? " in 
his own way, and Testamurs by scores would flutter 
out of their pockets, sign themselves, and flutter oflF 
into his. D's " How do you do ? " is a speech in itself. 
It gives you a general impression that men are not 
half as bad as you thought them, apologises for un- 
answered letters, assures you of the warmest friendship, 
and sets your mind at rest on every topic which has 
of old made it anxious. I suppose it is this last 
property of it which makes it as sovereign against 
scepticism as it is against indigestion and blue devils, 
Strauss and Frank Newman, and Essays and Reviews 
vanish away. And I believe that the secret of D.'s 
great orthodoxy is this, that whenever a doubt crosses 
his mind he just says to himself, " How do you do, 
my dear D., how do you do ? " and in an instant 
becomes as sound as the Thirty-nine Articles. — Write 
at once, J. R. Green. 



To W. Boyd Dawkins 

"January 6, 1862. 

Were you aware, my dear Dax, that the Somerset 
Arch. Soc. (I copy from their report 1852) possesses 
"an important unpublished work by the late Mr. 
Williams, on the Geology of Somerset, Devon, and 
Cornwall ? It is a work of great research, and contains 
new views of the order of strata in the western 
counties. The manuscript book is accompanied by Mr. 
W.'s field map of the counties, geologically coloured, 
and large and extensive diagrams of the district in 
various directions." Mr. W.'s theories may be as 
valuable, say as Mr. Dawkins's, but his details, I should 
think, might bear gleaning. Now we are on the topic 
of our book I have a little to tell, if I have not told 
it before, of my interview with Stanley. I explained 



94 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

our plan as a whole — the new connection established 
by recent discovery between the two sciences, — gave 
him as good an idea as I could of the way you meant 
to treat your division, and spoke at large of my own. 
He cordially approved the latter, professing himself 
utterly at sea in the former, but was full of encourage- 
ment, and offers of " recommendation." We had 
better apply to a publisher at once^ he said, before our 
subscription list, stating what our expectations from 
the latter would be. He approved of our plan of 
obtaining " introductions," suggested Phillips for yours, 
and offered me his own. On the whole as Parker is 
interested in the county, he recommended me to apply 
to him. All this promises a good voyage to our little 
book, and I think we may as well apply at the 
beginning of next term, when Stanley and Phillips can 
speak personally for us. 

I remove on Saturday to my rooms at 30 Haver- 
stock Street, City Road, our lay assistant's house. 
There I am as sure of cleanliness as I am here of dirt. 
When shall I see you there ? An ovation waits you 
in King's Square, where the last doll has received the 
name of" William " in your honour. They are wonder- 
fully touched with your thoughtful kindliness. I being 
accustomed to it was so little affected that I was 
unanimously voted hard-hearted. 

Meanwhile, a little tact is doing its work. My old 
project, so long held in check, of the formation of a 
choir, suddenly finds favour in the sight of all. My 
•Incumbent is ready with the salary of a choir-instructor ; 
one friend is off to Exeter Hall, to engage men for 
basses and tenors ; another is hot upon practising the 
boys steadily for an hour a week. I expect a few break- 
downs, but we shall in the end get a choir ; and I shall 
inscribe on my shield, when I take to wearing one, old 
Charles V.'s motto, " Time and I against any three " 
(mem. the three not to be Daxes, I am so awfully afraid 
of hoc genus). — Believe me, most affectionately yours, 

J. R. Green. 



II CLERICAL CAREER 95 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

City Road, 

"January 15, 1862. 

You will see, my dear Dax, that I have changed my 
lodgings, and in the horrors attendant upon the change 
a reason why I have not answered previously the letter 
of yours which crossed my last. However, 1 am com- 
fortably settled here now, and impatient to see you in 
my new rooms. 

You are due here, are you not, for your paper before 
the GqoI. Soc. about the end of the month ? Pray 
introduce me to Macmillan when you arrive, if such 
a thing be possible. You never made a better hit. 
Among the Stanley and Kingsley set Macmillan is the 
" pet publisher" of the day. Of all this, however, more 
when we meet. I had this morning a letter from Trevor 
Owen — he is the busiest of curates — apparently very 
happy and busied in his parish. Dick tells me (from 
good sources) that Ch. is becoming an Oxford Simeon ; 
has eighty men at prayer-meetings, is going to re-pew 
his church for their accommodation, build new schools, 
etc., etc. God speed him! There may be higher and 
nobler creeds than his, but there never was a truer, 
more earnest-minded labourer among the orwepyoL deov. 
Perhaps this narrow type of Evangelicalism has its use, 
sweeps the narrower, more limited minds into Christ's 
net, gathers up " the crumbs that remain that nothing 
be lost." God is a great Economist. I have been 
immensely struck, in going over the " Som. Arc. Ass.," 
to find how all their attention has been concentrated on 
a few periods ; on the British (so-called) and Mediaeval 
times. Roman Somerset attracts very little attention, 
Saxon ditto none; there is not a paper on the Norman 
period, nor on the Reformation, only one on the Great 
Rebellion time, none on the Monmouth rebellion, or 
thence to our own day. I think — if I do nothing else 
— I shall direct the attention of our Somerset friends 
to new diggings. So far as I have gone I am at no loss 



^6 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

for materials. I have a question or two for you to 
solve if you visit the Taunton Museum. There are 
some birds' bones found at Worle Camp, with those of 
Bos longifrons, etc., British pickings of disputed age ; 
I fancy bones of domestic fowls, which, if so, would 
throw great light on date of such remains. I don't 
doubt you could bring Osteology to bear on this ques- 
tion — it would be a very novel application. 

Come and enjoy your repute at the Parsonage. My 
nose is sadly dislocated there, and I am every day 
tempted to buy an advowson, and present it to my 
Incumbent, to eclipse your generosity ! The next living 
which falls in your way — pray, think of me. — Your 
affect, friend, J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

The Parsonage, King's Square, 
July 24, 1862. 

[This letter refers to the death of Mrs. Ward on 
July 2, 1862.] 

My dear Dax — I have been hoping to hear from 
you day after day the event of your candidature at 
Southampton, which I am afraid by your silence has 
been unsuccessful. With such testimonials, however, 
as yours, ill-success cannot continue long, and in the 
meantime you can safely commit your way to the 
Wisdom which ordereth our going, and " maketh our 
way acceptable" to Itself. 

It is very hard, however, to feel this — harder than 
to write it — this perfect submission to the Will of God. 
You know to what I allude, but you cannot know how 
day after day but renews the sense of loss, and seems 
to leave me but the more desolate than before. I am 
sure of your sympathy, dear Dax, do not let me be 
less sure of your prayers. 

You ask in what way the aid you so frankly offer 
can be afforded. I did not point to any particular 
mode ; you might hear of some presentation to a school 



11 CLERICAL CAREER 97 

for one boy, or of an exhibition for another, or of some 
office in the city for another ; if such things chanced to 
come before you I feel sure you would remember these 
motherless children. It is a great comfort to me to be 
able to do some little towards comforting them. My 
poor Incumbent does not rally — rather seems to yield 
to depression more every day. 

This is a chill, dull letter, and yet it is a pleasure to 
write it and know that dull as it is you will be glad to 
have it. W. blamed me for refusing any legacy from 
my Aunt. " What if you were ill and your means 
failed ? " he asked. " Then I should write to Dax." — 
Good-bye, friend, loyal and true, J. R. Green. 



To W. Boyd Dawkins 



King's Square, 
July 25, 1862. 



I write merely a few hurried words, my dear Dax, to 
congratulate you on your accession to Jermyn Street, 
announced in to-day's Times. Whatever comes your 
life-work is now fully begun. You, I know, will not 
waste precious years as I have done ; with you life and 
its work is a sacred thing — the Gift of God. Let me 
know what you are doing and thinking, it is long since 
I have heard from you. 

I am at present sleeping up at Highgate, where 
the air is giving me tone and vigour ; not that I am 
not in admirable health, but depression has its usual 
results. 

I shudder to think in what a depth of worldliness 
this great sorrow found and struck me. It is so easy to 
/ talk of Eternity, and so hard to live out of Time. Yet 
this — if any — is the lesson of Death to souls that must 
be Eternal. The blow has humbled — if it has crushed 
me — and I look on these, her little ones, coming so near 
to God in the simplicity and afFectionateness of their 
piety, while I stand so far off in the coldness and life- 
lessness of mine, and understand the Lord " Except ye 



98 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

) be as little children ye cannot see the Kingdom of 
^ God." 

God bless you in all things, dear Dax, and keep you, 
true friend to yours, J. R. Green.^ 



From Diary 



Wellington, 
August 20, 1862. 



The meeting followed, and after papers by Hugo 
and Parker of very different caliber, I read, in great fear 
and trembling, my "St. Dunstan." It "took," was much 
applauded, and the critic I so much dreaded took me 
by the hand as I came down and congratulated me. 
" You remember me, do you ? I remember little Johnny 
Green." He afterwards introduced me to his wife, 
whose Jacobite songs I remember with my Jacobite 
enthusiasm years ago. Freeman is the Philistine of 
these meetings, but nothing has been of such use to 
Archseology as the Archaeological Philistine. And 
moreover beneath his brusqueness lies a real human 
heart full of fun and life, which lights up a tedious dis- 
cussion wonderfully. I was " kudized " at the dejeuner 
by SandfordjOur President, a fine old English gentleman 
of the open-faced, open-waistcoated style; and had an 
interesting walk after it with Parker, who told me of 
the obstruction he had met with in endeavouring to 
set the Colleges to investigate their own history. I 
mentioned to him my civic scheme; he approved of it; 
from words of his I see that the Dons make him feel 
and wince under his position of a " citizen." How like 
Oxford ! We met Freeman again. " You not only 
read your books well, but you know how to use them." 
I really was very proud of the praise. He followed it 
up by requesting me to write for the Saturday. I 

1 Three letters written soon afterwards are occupied with editorial suggestions 
about the second number of the Druid, and mention the meeting at Wellington, 
but give no account of the proceedings there. With one of them (August 14), he 
sends his sermon upon Mrs. Ward. " It is a name I cannot write even now 
without tears. Sluotidie morimur, says Seneca somewhere. How much of 
myself lies buried in that quiet grave I hardly yet know." 



II CLERICAL CAREER 



99 



was thunderstruck ; but promised to try. I don't 
suppose I shall do. Still it was flattering to be told, 
" I was desired by the Editor to look out for promis- 
ing young men, so I askjoz^." 

He adds — "A terrible loneliness presses on me as I 
write. Oh, I would give all that opens before me for 

lone word from those still lips. If God will but grant 

I me to help forward her little ones." 

King's Square, 
Sunday, August 24. 

Rose at 6.15. Have written to my sister, Dawkins, 
Agnes, and Walter, and breakfasted. Sunday-school 
and a marriage service are to follow. How dingy this 
neighbourhood looks after that glorious country, one 
limitless park broken with lanes and hedgerows and 
glorious elms, dotted with patches of golden corn that 
caught the light and flung it over the landscape, and 
set in that wonderful framework of hills. There is 
little to tie me here now save my little ones — and that 
is not little. 

Tuesday. — I feel my return to the heat and imprison- 
ment of town in lassitude of body and mind. Yester- 
day I wrote some letters, and ran through Guizot's 
Visit to England in 1 840, a book weighed down with 
recollections of dead diplomacies, but full of personal 
sketches which retain their interest, and of just and fair 
reflections on English society and institutions. . . . 

This morning, after writing to Hughes and D., I read 
three-fourths of Ten Tears of Imperialism in France, 
acute, vigorous in style, and throwing much light on 
the France of to-day. Certainly there is a life and 
reality about Imperial France which contrasts strongly 
with the conventionalism, miscalled conservatism, of 
the France of Louis Philippe. . . . 

Saturday, Aug. 30. — An idle week. I purpose 
reading every day some portion of French and English 
history in connection. Thursday I read Thierry's 
:LofC. 



loo LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Lettres sur rHistoire de France ^ cap. i— 6, and yes- 
terday same cap. 7—9, and Sismondi, pref. and cap. i. 
This morning rose at 6. From 7 to 8 Sismondi (and 
after breakfast till 12) cap. 2, 3, 4, with Lappenberg 
to Agricola. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

King's Square, 
September i, 1862. 

[Green did not at this time become a contributor to 
the Saturday Review^ though he had some communi- 
cation with Freeman about it.] 

I cannot help smiling, my dear Dax, at the contrast 
between the life sketched in your letter and the life 
I shall have to describe in mine. You — reading, 
geologising, slanging Browne, writing papers, organising 
a Natural History Society, sketching curates, finding a 
bone-cave in the sermon, off to the British Association, — 
I petting little Margie on the sofa, and preferring a chat 
with her to writing my crack article for the Saturday. 
" Do you know, Mr. Green, why mamma has gone to 
Heaven ? Jesus wanted her ! " I wonder how much 
deeper the Saturday could have gone than this little 
philosopher of four. She is very puzzled about the 
question of recognition. " Mamma is an angel now. 
How shall I know her when I go to Heaven .? Oh, 
I know, she will come and tell me she is my own 
mamma. Shall you go to Heaven, Mr. Green .? Oh 
yes, you will come with us, and we shall all be together 
again." Do you ever feel humbled and guilty before a 
child .f* I thought, and think still, of her " Shall you 
go to Heaven ? " and know not what to say. I daresay 
it is very unphilosophical, very " contrary to sound 
/ doctrine," but Heaven is far dearer to me now one I 
I love is there. And yet I cannot say, with my little 
one, " Oh yes." Impressions that seemed so deep flit 
away so fast, and Eternity that revealed itself across the 
grave shrouds itself again, and Heaven that seemed so 
near recedes farther and farther away. Oh, if I love 



II 



CLERICAL CAREER loi 



Heaven I love all ; even the affections that chain most 
men to earth are there to draw me thither. Pray for 
me, Dax, as I for you, that we may answer this child's 
question with her " Oh yes." 

It is a little additional bond between us that you like 
Elia. Lamb's humour has a delicate and evanescent 
flavour that can only be described by his own words in 
describing the flavour of " Roast Pig." Of course you 
have read that incomparable essay. I knew a Goth 
once who wrote on the margin of his copy (he lent it 
to my sister Addie, who showed it me), " 1 don't believe 
a word of it." I longed for dear Charles Lamb to rise 
again a'nd enjoy the joke. 

Pray pursue your investigations de castris rotundis. 
In spite of Warre's explanations they strike at the root 
of his theories. He believes " round camp " to = Belgic; 
the Belgae being an invading people from (prob) 
Northern Gaul, and this being " their type." Now if 
the round form be, in a majority of cases, determined 
by local considerations, it is impossible to draw any 
radical distinction between these and other camps. 
They may have been works of the same people under 
different circumstances. And " may have been " is all 
he alleges for his own theory. As to the date of" hut 
circles," it is, I think, a far more difficult question than 
archaeologists generally suppose. Remembering the 
swarms of outlaw bands, at various times of our history, 
and the degraded condition of the peasantry till quite 
a late epoch, it requires, I think, some boldness to date 
them before the invasion of Claudius. However, this is 
"treason," and for your own ear alone. . . . — Good-bye, 
dear Dax, affectionately yours, J. R. Green. 

Kjng's Square, 
September 6, 1862. 

[This letter refers to the Druid.'] 

Your *^ quiet Sunday " project, dear Dax, has given 
quite a spur to my never very slumbering desire to see 



I02 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

and chat with you. I have no friends — dogs, horses, 
cats, or mice — and I can but trust that " gubs " are as 
rare as vipers. 

B.'s paper is " rot," and I have told him so in plain 
words. His choosing such a subject is a piece of great 
conceit. Why can't he paddle till he has learnt to 
swim. However, though a little plain and honest, my 
note is, I am sure, kind, and will really be of use to 
him if he will take the advice I give. I, however, send 
you first the note that you may see it. 

L.'s letter is a contrast to its fellow. I shall be glad to 
see his papers. Have you written to D. ? (I ask because 
I did in very diplomatic style), and will you try H. ? 

What is this about raising the price to 2s. 6d, ? 
Who in his senses would give half-a-crown for it ? I 
hope next Monday, when the British Museum opens, 
to set to and complete my paper for the Drz^z<^ ; and in 
the course of next week I shall send those papers for 
the Saturday to Freeman. Will " Somerleaze, near 
Glastonbury," find him ? Write and tell me. I think 
it very likely I shall have a little book out in about 
twelve months. — Affectionately yours, 

J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

King's Square, 
September 1 1, 1862. 

I trouble you with another note, my dear Dawkins, 
partly to remind you of your promised visit on Sunday, 
a pleasure which no excuse will prevail on me to forego ; 
partly to tell you that B. is in a state of hopeful peni- 
tence, apologises for his paper, and promises amend- 
ment ; but more to explain to you the leading features 
of a new design which I should wish you to think over, 
and give me your opinion of when you arrive. 

You know, perhaps, that my earliest project in the 
department of history was that which Dean Hook has 
since carried out — a series of lives of the " Archbishops 
of Canterbury." The greatness of many of the prelates 



II CLERICAL CAREER 103 

struck so vividly on my imagination that it was not till 
I came to closer quarters with the subject that I per- 
ceived, what only the progress of the work has revealed 
to the Dean, the insignificance of others, and the im- 
possibility of stringing the history of the Church upon 
so varied a collection of individuals. 

I left Oxford, therefore, with the full purpose of 
becoming the historian of the Church of England. Few, 
I felt, were more fitted, by the historical tendency, the 
predominant feeling of reverence, the moderation, even 
the want of logic or enthusiasm in their minds, for the 
task of describing a Church founded in the past, yet 
capable' of wondrous adaptation to the needs of the 
present, the creature of repeated compromises, essen- 
tially sober yet essentially illogical. The prospect wi- 
dened as I read and thought. On the one hand, I could 
not fetter down the word " Church " to any particular 
branch of the Christian communion in England ; after 
the Reformation, therefore, all historical unity would 
have been gone, though, throughout the hubbub of 
warring sects, an ideal unity might still have been sought 
and found. On the other, 1 could not describe the 
Church from the purely external and formal point of 
view taken by the general class of ecclesiastical historian ; 
its history was, with me, the narrative of Christian civ- 
ihsation. And to arrive at a knowledge of this, it 
was necessary to know thoroughly the civil history of 
the periods which I passed through ; to investigate 
the progress of thought, of religion, of liberty, even the 
material progress of England. No existing history 
helped me ; rather, I have been struck with the utter 
blindness of all and every one to the real subjects which 
they profess to treat — the national growth and devel- 
opment of our country. 

I should then have had to discover the History of 
England, only after my investigations to throw them 
aside and confine myself to a narrower subject — a sub- 
ject too whose treatment after the seventeenth century 
becomes (artistically) impossible and unhistorical. 



I04 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

I tell you all this in so great detail because I fear a 
charge of vacillation in announcing my purpose of 
undertaking the " History of England." You will see 
how there is no vacillation in the matter, but a deliberate 
development and growth. 

I won't trouble you with my ideas as to the History 
or its treatment. But if you were to change its title 
into that of " A History of the Developement of Chris- 
tian Civilisation in England," you would not do it 
much wrong. 

Good-bye, if this seems too like an essay, congratu- 
late yourself on being spared an essay in conversation, 
a talked essay instead of a written one. I am deliber- 
ating whether to preach next Sunday, but your dread of 
"curates" and their sermons may perhaps induce me 
to spare you. — Good-bye, affectionately yours, 

J. R. Green. 

[In his diary for September 12 Green says, " Yester- 
day as I read Sismondi, I resolved to abandon the 
more limited subject which I had chosen as my theme, 
and to become the historian of England." He then 
gives an account of his reasons in nearly the same words 
as those of the preceding letter. He then adds : 
" With a full consciousness of many great deficiencies, 
I devote myself to the task. The greatest of them is, 
perhaps, a dislike for abstract thought, which would 
ever tempt me to subordinate general tendencies to 
particular events and principles to individuals. But 
two great helps I can — and by God's help, purpose to 
bring to its execution, — unflinching labour and an 
earnest desire for Truth. It has been my greatest joy 
to see (as I saw in the case of * Dunstan') that I did 
not hesitate to abandon long-cherished theories before 
the call of less interesting and attractive fact. I pray 
God, in whose name and to whose glory I undertake 
this work, to grant me in it, above all, the earnest love 
and patient toil after historical truth."] 



II CLERICAL CAREER 105 

2"<? W. Boyd Dawkins 

King's Square, 
September 24, 1862. 

I don't doubt, my dear Dax, that you have saluted 
me by many not very complimentary epithets for my 
long silence. Perhaps my diary would be my best 
excuse. Hughes's marriage, my brother's visit, sermon 
writing, and miscellanea occupied from Thursday till 
Sunday. On Sunday night, on my return from church, 
it was discovered that the house had been broken into, 
my cashbox broken open, and ;^io abstracted. With 
the money went, what I valued far more, my letters to 
and from the dear friend who is gone. As securities 
for much larger sums than ;^io went with it I had to 
waste Monday in providing against further depreda- 
tions at the bank, and when Tuesday came I found the 
day was promised and vowed to my brother and sister, 
and spent it with them at the Exhibition. When I 
returned a dirty packet awaited me, — the thief, after 
examining the letters, had sent them back ! Conceive 
my delight, first at the recovery of what I prized so 
much, secondly at the revelation of the fellow's own 
heart. Of course X knows he had a motive. It is 
quite marvellous how cunning he is in " motives." The 
curious thing is that he can only discover bad motives 
for every good act, and does not reverse the matter and 
discover good ones for every evil act. It is clear that 
if there is a high probability for an evil motive having 
prompted the restoration of my letters, there is an 
equally high probability of a good motive having 
prompted their abstraction. But then there is the keen 
delight of sneering at sentiment, honour and high feel- 
ing having been rechristened by gentlemen of the 
" motive " school. Well, he is welcome to his enjoy- 
ment. 

Your Somerset house payments I will now attend to. 
On Monday 1 was left with is. 6d. in my pockets, and 
could plead " no assets." As to Durham, unless I 



io6 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

greatly mistake, all that has as yet appeared in the 
report of the commissioners appointed to inquire into 
the state of the university, advises a total reconstruction 
in the secular system. Whatever one's own wishes 
might be, there is not the slightest probability of the 
scheme as they propose it eventually passing. It stands 
over at any rate till Parliament meets. 

I doubt (pardonnez moi) your assertion about there 
being no book on the general geology and geography of 
England. Remember that a rather popular and not a 
highly scientific book is what I want. I am not going 
to write a scientific treatise, but a geographical preface. 
Is there not a book by Macculloch ? Ask your co- 
adjutor Avelyn. Then, too, could you lend me your 
jw?^// geological map? i.e. if you don't want it at all. 
I am really rather bothered about this, as I want to 
commence at once. After a chapter on the Geology 
and Geography of England, its bearing on the industry, 
character, and history of ye people, I proceed to a second 
on " Prehistoric Britain," from tumuli, skulls, Davis 
and Thurnam's Crania Britannica, etc. Now, this is a 
subject of yours, on which you probably have some 
valuable papers. Pray com^nunicate all the data you have 
to me, your own researches included. Do not mind 
overloading me with references to books and papers, 
that is what I want. My third chapter will embrace 
from Caesar to Agricola. My fourth an exhaustive 
sketch of Roman Britain from the second to the fourth 
century. My fifth (the most difficult in the book) on 
the fall of the Roman Empire in Britain, the rise of 
independent kingdoms and states, and the early con- 
quests of the Saxons. . . . 

Good-bye, — a shoppy letter you will say ; I hope 
you are happy and well, as so good a fellow ought to be, 
though I feel disgusted at your knavery in re the " Nat. 
Hist, depart, of the Som. Arch. Ass.," as you facetiously 
term it. — Good-bye, affectionately yours, 

J. R. Green. 



II CLERICAL CAREER 107 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

King's Square, 
October i6, 1862. 

[An omitted passage refers to the Druid. I have 
omitted various notes, going into editorial details, upon 
that periodical. It is enough to say that A. H. Clough 
was one of the contributors.] 

Whatever comes to you never let go your ideal. 
I think it is a great thing and one that " lifts one up for 
ever," to have laboured with singleness of mind for 
knowledge. If I could advance History, if you could 
advance Science, by a single fact (it is a {illegible) and 
can never die), I am sure we could both willingly lose 
all thought of ourselves, and be content to remain 
obscure, and it may be poor. But knowledge is great 
riches. And to live face to face with the revolutions of 
nature or of man is to be wealthy indeed. I am work- 
ing well at my history, and if I could photograph the 
thoughts of my brain, you would see the greater part of 
the two first chapters. But in setting on paper I cannot 
help being very slow. I see at every sentence some 
new and better plan of arrangement, some necessity for 
doubting an old and accepted fact, — or of bringing in 
a wholly new series of topics, — that here, as in life, 
diversa sunt impedimenta ; it is the very wealth of 
materials which hinders my progress. However, I 
begin with the great empire of the Celt over Ireland 
and Britain and Gaul and Italy and Spain, — then it is 
broken up by the invasion of the Bolg, pulsing on the 
shores of Britain, — by the growth of Druidism, — by the 
increase of wealth and civilisation, — by the arms of 
Rome. 

Then Caesar strikes it down, — but it lives still in 
Britain and Ireland, and even Agricola when his cam- 
paign completes its reduction in the first leaves it still 
free in the second. Will it not revolutionise our history, 
to strive from the Irish traditions and poems to re-create 



io8 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

those ages of which nothing is known, to see the Bolg 
coming in primeval time from the Rhine to the Liffey, 
the Forth, and the Thames ? Even a failure will draw 
attention and arouse history to fill up the gap. If I 
can be nothing else I will be the forlorn hope and help 
to fill the ditch. — Good-bye, God bless you. 

J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

Oxford, 
October 27, 1862. 

[Green was staying at Oxford, where his aunt died 
on October 23.] 

MoN CHER Ami — The trouble of arranging details 
(a task especially uncongenial to me as you know), of 
seeing undertakers, registrars, and the " grim train of 
death " must be my apology for omitting to send you 
back or to notice your paper on Battle Church. I must 
say I think the preface the best part of it — that one 
long crow of triumph over folk " impudent as they are 
small, who know nothing of tracery or Parker's book 
thereupon " — a doo-de-doo-doodle-doo ! ! 

There is a fellow here, "impudent" it may be, but 
undoubtedly small, who wishes to know: i. Whether 
the Archaeol. Society of Sussex, being one of the best in 
England, has not embalmed the Church in some number 
of its Transactions ? 1. What authority for " pointed 
arches immediately after the landing of William " ? 
Parker's book on " Dawkinsius ille ? " 3. Concerning 
that " Purbeck factory," why may not the "gang of 
workmen " have made the two fonts at their respective 
localities rather than at the isle of Purbeck ? And is 
not the latter hypothesis a Httle more in accordance with 
modern notions than with ancient ? Item concerning 
the " Pilaster factory." 

{Pace the small impudent man, it may be worth 
while to gather up facts relative to this last point. Its 
bearing on industrial progress in England is most 
important.) 



II CLERICAL CAREER 



109 



4. In your concluding generalisation you say " Never 
was architecture and carving at a lower ebb in England 
than in the days of the Stuarts." These " days," 
comments " homunculus impudens," would range 
roughly over the whole of the seventeenth century, and 
include Wadham Chapel in the earlier period and Christ- 
church Hall staircase in the latter. Looking at these, 
at the Gothic reaction under James 1. and Charles I., 
at the existence of Inigo Jones and Whitehall, and the 
rather obstinate fact of the architecture of the eighteenth 
coming directly after this abused architecture of the 
seventeenth, Homunculus wishes a little reconsideration 
of this point. 

I forward you with it fragmenta quadam of a paper 
now in process of printing, I have left materials 
enough for a second. Pardon me for having scribbled 
your papers over with pencil marks ; I rewrote the 
paper in the train and had no other writing materials. 
B. is in a state of Heavenly tranquillity and friend- 
ship, and has forgiven me for having made his paper 
Christian, I have prevented him from acting most 
foolishly in one matter since I have been here, — he 
abused me but adopted my unpalatable advice. Ah 
me ! isn't there a Providence in the world which watches 
over Bs. ? 

Good-bye, remember me very kindly to your mother 
and believe me yours {Minitne atque impudentissime)^ 

J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

King's Square, 
November 4, 1862. 

[F. D. Maurice had thoughts at this time of resign- 
ing the Chapel of St. Peter's, Vere Street, in order that 
his motives for adherence to the Church of England 
might be beyond suspicion. He was induced by 
Bishop Tait to abandon the intention.] 

My dear Dax — I re-inclose Falconer's letter, a 
very frank and honest one. I see no reason for 



no LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

supposing Roberts aware of the intentions of the 
Council, and prefer the charitable theory. Most 
earnestly do I hope for your success — whatever be the 
fate of our housekeeping projects. I have more than 
myself to think of now, you know. My sister must, 
in a year's time, live with me, a fact which complicates 
matters. Yet I am desirous of a settlement of some 
sort. I see storms ahead. The rumours of Maurice's 
rejection of clerical preferment have set me thinking — 
thinking. There are clearly two errors to be avoided. 
I. Remaining in a ministry without holding the 
prescribed doctrines of that ministry. 2. The opposite 
one of exaggerating one's own variance of opinion 
from the prescribed formularies. And there are two 
great principles to be kept in mind. i. To remain in 
the ministry of the Church of England so long as by 
doing so one is helping to broaden its sphere of 
thought. 2. To quit it the moment continuance 
within it tends to narrow one's own. 

I get wretched as I think of it. At the worst 
indeed one does but become a layman of the Church of 
England. But this — this owning one's start a false one, 
owning the failure of one's theories, owning that one's 
teaching has not been fair to the Church — this beginning 
again is not all. I hope I look a little beyond myself. 
If the clergy are bound down and the laity unbound — 
if the Teacher may not seek the Truth, and the taught 
may, if the Church puts the Bible in the hand of one as 
a living spirit, in the hand of the other as a dead letter 
— what is to come of it ? I love the Church of England. 
You who know what my historic plans were for it — 
know this well. But what is to become of such a 
monstrous system, such a Godless lie as this ? 

If they would but let things alone ! I see every day 
the light broadening. I see men like Ward letting in 
new light, admitting, unconsciously, limits to their old 
dogmatism. I could wait and hope, knowing Veritas 
prevalebit. But Law must be called in to crystallise 
this embryonic mass. Law must hedge in Truth and 



II CLERICAL CAREER m 

the Conscience. Essayists must be condemned. Jowett 
is, I hear, to be prosecuted, Maurice is going, — Colenso 
is to be, 1 know not what. 

I wait — but I think the end is at hand. 

"Who are the Gwythol ? " "A tribe, individuals 
of which are scattered over England, one being found at 
Battle, Sussex. Hence our old word ^ wittol ' or block- 
head, from their intellectual qualities." 

" Who are Gwyddel ? " People whom Basil Jones 
knows something about — and whom I have learnt some- 
thing about from Basil Jones. 

I go down to Oxford again on Friday. The holiday 
at Battle 1 still hope for, if I may be suffered to hope. 
Good-bye, J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

King's Square, 
November zo, 1862. 

My dear Dax — I fear I have been very neglectful 
of you of late. It sprang of my being " over careful" 
about myself. I begin at last to wish to " get on," 
not for my own sake. Heaven knows; indeed I am most 
happy and comfortable here. But, as you know, there 
are others of whom I think incessantly, and whom my 
promotion would enable me to do more for. While my 
thoughts were first fermenting came a quasi-offer from 
Ridgway — my old Tutor — just appointed to the 
Principalship of the Training College at Culham, of his 
Vice-Principalship, — ^200, rooms and grub, in all X300. 
No position could have been less to my taste. Indeed, 
to leave London at all would be a sore trial, both in a 
literary sense and as parting me from my dear little ones 
here. However, I braced myself stoically up, and all 
but accepted it — when, voila, a note from the Bishop's 
Chaplain, Freemantle — followed by an interview in 
which, as I understood him, he offered me the Curacy 
of Fulham, under the Bishop's nose, with a distinct 
promise of promotion if I did well. I consulted others, 
and all agreed it was a brilliant opening, so I definitely 



112 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

declined the other, when this morning arrives a note 
from Freemantle telling me of another candidate with 
apparently quite as good a chance, if not better. This 
is Coxhead, whom 1 think you met once here — very 
good fellow and very " heavy." I take it for granted 
that a combination of these qualities will succeed, and 
don't feel disposed at any rate to make any push for the 
place (pushing not being in my line), so I suppose the 
result will be I shall remain where I am — a result not 
at all disagreeable. Still, all this has broken in on the 
even tenor of my way, as you may suppose, and has 
been intensely disagreeable. If I don't get Fulham I 
shall remain here, doing far more than I have done as 
a curate, but definitely relinquishing all hope or outlook for 
clerical preferment, and throwing my future wholly on 
literature. . . . 

Next [quam proximo intervallo) to the pleasure of 
having you here is the pleasure of having A., who has 
entered at Lincoln's Inn, and is full of his new profession. 
Somebody said that Burke's conversation was equally 
entertaining whatever its subject, and so it is with A. 
He is charming alike in mortgages and revivals, and 
Petronius and Mathew of Westminster, and the first 
chapter of Genesis, and the date of the Civil Law, and 
Oxford scepticism, and the Indian Civil Service, and 
Palaeontology, and the Latin Grammar, and the Civil 
War in America (to.mention about one-tenth of the 
topics ranged over in some three hours last night), in all 
" nil tetigit quod non ornavit." ^ Of course he equally 
desires your settlement in town. — Believe me most 
affectionately yours, J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

King's Square, 
November 25, 1862. 

My dear Dax — The Fulham affair has, through 
a singular succession of mishaps, apparently blown 

1 Johnson's epitaph on Goldsmith : misquoted for *' nihil quod tetiget non ornavit." 



II CLERICAL CAREER 113 

over, and I am driven to remain (hard fate ! ) with the 
little ones whom I love best on earth. Do you not 
pity me ? Fulham turns out to be far more eligible 
than I had ventured to hope so that there is every- 
thing to vex me if I choose to be vext, but I dont. 
And so revenons an mouton of King's Square for a 
year or two more. An awful thing for a " genius " — 
is it not ? You defined " genius " when here as a 
peculiar aptitude for a certain branch of study. Pardon 
me, that is Talent. Genius is a much higher thing : 
the power of bending circumstances to our will. In 
other words, it is something to have a special aptitude 
for Stones, Hke you, or Dates-cum-facts, like me ; it is 
something more to be able to elicit greatness and fame 
out of a Surveyorship or a Curacy. 

Suppose we go in then for Genius, not Talent. 

I have no news, save news of the weather — for 
the last two or three days has made me a Bus-meteor- 
ologist in my frequent Fulham voyages in chase of 
this Will-o'-the-Wisp of a Cure. But as my observa- 
tions are extremely unscientific, referring principally to 
the coldness of my fingers and blueness of my nose, I 
forbear to trouble you with them. 

My Incumbent's sermon in the evening, he tells 
me, was intended to supply simply the deficiencies of 
mine. Is it not charming to convert an Incumbent 
into an Editor, and his sermon into an Appendix ? — I 
feel quite proud. — Yours affectionately, 

J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

King's Square, 
December g, 1862. 

Nothing, dear Dax, could better picture my languor 
and physical depression during the past week than 
the fact that I have left your most affectionate note 
without a reply. Simple as it was, it gave me great 
pleasure at a time when my thoughts were very gloomy 
and depressed. The clouds have cleared away now, 



114 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

but much of the weakness continues ; and hovering 
about is that with me infallible sign of something 
wrong, restlessness, and a craving to be out of this 
Babel of brick and mortar in some quiet little country 
parsonage. 

I can say however to all this " It cannot be." Babel 
must be my home for years, and one must put a brave 
heart on it as thousands have done before me. Indeed 
my present plans point rather to a settlement in Babel. 
I have some notion of getting up a "district" here, 
and becoming an Incumbent. More, however, of this 
when I see the matter a little clearer. 

And now of yourself. It was charming to hear 
that the storm had blown over, and your content and 
happiness come back again. Forgive so un-news-ey 
a letter, and heap coals of fire on my head in your 
next. In the meanwhile believe me. — Sincerely yours, 

J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

King's Square, 
December 15, 1862. 

Many thanks, dear Dax, for your speedy remittance 
which I hasten to acknowledge, though hardly in 
spirits for a letter. I have just come from Guildhall, 
where I have been pleading for a boy who has just 
left our school with the best of characters, and within 
six months has robbed his employer. The magistrate 
was very considerate, and the boy appearing really to 
have been misled by a fellow-apprentice, dismissed him 
with a reprimand. There were a group of Pharisees 
at the door as we left the court, and their comments 
were pleasant to hear, " Lucky you escaped transporta- 
tion, my boy ! " "A few years ago you would have 
been hung for that, young sir," and the like. W. 
was with me, and his eyes filled with tears. " I was 
thinking," he said, " if it had been one of my boys 
standing there " — and then he paused, I never liked 
him more. 



II CLERICAL CAREER 115 

Ne nos inducas in Tentationem — sed libera nos a 
malo — how we all tremble on the verge of the great 
abyss, held back only by the Grace of God. Ne nos 
inducas — ne nos inducas ! 

It is what I often think of when these dear little 
ones here come crowding into my arms, and their 
white little souls stand out in relief against mine. It 
is an awful thought that the hours as they pass will 
bring sin and shame to the little one who nestles to 
one's breast, and an awful mystery that that very sin 
and taint seems needful for the full development of 
man — that the penitent scarred with traces of past 
guilt is nobler and higher in the scale of humanity 
than the guileless child. What does it all mean ? 

But I weary you, and cross perhaps that fresh pure 
pleasure you are just taking in the love of children. 
No, I have no " bookish ways " with children. Even 
now you would laugh to know the eagerness I feel 
for the love of the little ones here. " Christmas comes, 
the time of gladness," as the carol has it, — "gladness " 
indeed when it brings all the loved ones around me. 
They all come home this week or next. — Faithfully 
yours, J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

King's Square, 
December 30, 1862. 

My dear Dax — This will reach you as the old 
year is passing away, and bring my best wishes for 
the New. They are no formal wishes for you, dear 
friend, whom every year makes an older, but cannot 
make a warmer or a surer one. It is one of the items 
in my bill of gratitude to God which the year sends in 
as it passes away, that knowing my need of a friend 
He has given me one so loyal and true. 

I hope your Xmas has been as happy as mine. 
Some people in this overwrought age long for the 
simpler and less complex pleasures of a lower stage of 
human culture ; for my own part I know of one simple 



ii6 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

pleasure that no human advance can rob one of, the 
joy of little children. They laugh with me, romp 
with me, steal my watch, run away with my sixpences, 
absorb my time, tyrannise over all my old bachelor 
habits, bid me " put down my book," and it is put 
down ; " talk," and I abandon my loved silences ; 
" play," and I play ; " take them out," and 1 turn 
sightseer for the first time in the 25th year of my Hfe. 
And out of all this comes a happy, most happy Xmas. 

This year our schoolmaster, having High Church 
leanings, has taken the Christmas decorations in hand. 
I defy any one to see them and remain grave. The 
ivy buds all over with white roses which are either 
miraculous or of white paper. The parish is divided 
on the question ; the orthodox like as usual the 
miraculous view ; the Neologians shout " paper." The 
matter is likely to come before the court of Arches, 
when we shall at last know what we are to believe. 

Another lovely controversy has been raging here on 
the Quantity and Quality of the consumption effected 
at the Tea-Meeting or School Treat. Happily this has 
been satisfactorily settled. A little boy burst on his 
way home, and obliged us with a post-mortem. Two 
layers of cake ; traces of watery action, supposed to 
have been produced by hot tea ; a layer of bread and 
butter ; two thick strata of seed-cake ; traces of re- 
newed aqueous disturbance ; a thin dark line (opinions 
divided. Orthodox say " tea grounds," the Neologians 
" slate-pencil " nibbled while waiting for grub) ; alter- 
nations of seed and plum-cake surmounted by four 
tiers of bread and butter, and disturbed by the action 
of liquor. A superficial deposit of a saccharine nature 
is supposed to consist principally of " goodies " from 
the Xmas tree. 

Our schoolmaster was superb. He had had a 
quarrel with the Incumbent, and was in tragic spirits. 
" Now Mr. G.," shouts the curate, " will you start a 
little music for the children ? " "I should infinitely 
prefer, sir, to lie down on the floor and die." " Hum, 



II CLERICAL CAREER 117 

but you know that wouldn't amuse the children half 
as much ! " " Sir, my heart is broken." " No matter 
if your voice is not." Risu solvuntur ira atque ma- 
roreSj and the carmen began. 

Sad nonsense. Isn't it time for happy nonsense 
this merry Christmas ? There are sad enough thoughts 
behind it. Thoughts of one who has found other 
peace than our " Peace on Earth." I wonder when 
that cloud will drift away. Perhaps only when all 
clouds drift away — in the New Heaven and New 
Earth. — Good-bye. God bless you. J. R. Green. 



To W. Boyd Dawkins 

Rev. N. T. Hughes, Linby, 
February 23, 1863. 

My dear Dawkins — My ride down here so utterly 
upset me that for two or three days I was in the depths 
of depression and physical weakness. And in order to 
meet this I had to dose myself with quinine and port 
wine, which effected their purpose but of course were 
the very worst things for my pleurisy, which is still 
therefore unsubdued. Still I trust much to the air, 
and I am able to get out, and hope this week will see 
the end of my ailment. I hope your own vanished in 
the air and leisure of Hailsham. 

The country round here was Sherwood forest, the 
scene of Robin Hood's exploits, and his cave and hut, 
both in the vicinity, bring them every day to one's 
memory. The oak stands at the entrance to Newstead, 
Byron's place, which is close by us. Beyond, on the 
low surge of hills that close the horizon, is the house 
of Mary Chaworth, his love. I amuse myself with 
parallels between Byron and Robin — the outlaws of 
ancient and modern days. 

H. is most kind, and as a nurse deserves a very high 
certificate. He has learnt a great deal these last few 
days in the mustard poultice line. His wife is in town, 



ii8 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

and he mourns after her like a dove, or a husband five 
months old. But he is a right good fellow, and a seeker 
after Truth. {Pace the signer of Scientific Protests.) 

Direct here, though I may be soon in town. — Faith- 
fully yours, J. R. Green. 

To JV. Boyd Dawkins 

HOXTON, 

March 24, 1863. 

[I omit the previous letter mentioned in the first 
sentence, criticising some opinions expressed by Prof. 
Dawkins.] 

My dear Dax — I think if you read my last letter 
again, you will see something graver in it than the irony 
of its tone. Indeed if it be not grave and earnest I 
have nothing graver, nothing more earnest to say now. 
Pray read it again. 

/ see no limit to this progress in " religion." It 
is on the very idea of progress that my faith, my deep 
and intense faith in Christianity, rests. Like you I see 
other religions — the faith of the heathen or the faith of 
the Jew — doing their part in the education of the human 
race. And I see the Race advancing beyond the faiths 
that instructed it, so that at each great advance of human 
thought a religion falls dead and vanishes away. And I 
judge that this must ever be a condition of human 
progress, except some religion appear which can move 
forward with the progress of man. There comes a reli- 
gion which does this. Take your Gibbon and test what 
I say. The fresh sons of the Germanic forests break in 
upon effete Rome — and all perishes of Rome save this. 
Christianity assumes new forms and a new life, and 
moulds this chaos into the World of the Middle Ages. 
Think how different was the " need " of Augustine and 
the " need " of St. Louis — yet Christianity had where- 
with to supply both. And then the Middle Ages 
vanish away, and the World of our day emerges from 
the Reformation, and Christianity takes new forms and 
infuses a new life into the new phase of humanity. 



II CLERICAL CAREER 119 

Think how various were the " needs " of St. Louis and 
Luther — yet Christianity could meet and satisfy both. 
And now human thought makes each hour advances 
such as it has never made before ; and Christianity, 
spirituaHsed and purified by the wider demands made 
upon it, is ready to meet and satisfy them all. Oh, how 
this retrospect over eighteen centuries of revolution 
brings out these old, old words, " I see that all things 
come to an end, but Thy commandment is exceeding 
broad ! " There are many sides to this thought which 
may serve to bring it closer home. Compare the 
religion which is theoretically next in rank to Christi- 
anity, the Moslem, and see how it utterly fails to meet 
the progress of man. Or, again, see the flexibility 
and adaptability of Christianity in the divisions of the 
Christian world, and ask what a life there must be in the 
faith that can satisfy and meet the wants of the English- 
man, the Spaniard, and the Greek. Or, again, think 
what a capacity of advance there must be in a faith 
which is simple enough for the Sussex cottager and deep 
enough for problems such as the problems of to-day. I 
glance at thoughts, each big enough for an essay, that 
I may hurry on to that view of the progress which one 
may call the internal as opposed to the external view. 
Christianity is a religion of the Future. The Sermon 
on the Mount is a succession of " impossible precepts." 
They are all summed up in a precept still more im- 
possible : " Be ye perfect, even as your Father in 
Heaven is perfect." And so it must ever keep ahead 
of man. If there be any truth in our veriest instincts, 
God must ever be beyond us, beyond our power, our 
knowledge, our virtue. And it is to that " beyond " 
that Christianity points — it is thither it bids man 
march. Hence life becomes, not the dead contented 
indolence of the Moslem, but a vivid activity. Think 
of St. Paul's images — the race, the fight — or of that 
nobler passage — the sum of Christian philosophy — 
where he .pictures the growth " together " of the Chris- 
tian Church, of the Christian world, " unto the measure 



I20 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

of the stature of the fulness of Christ " (see passage 
Eph. iv. 1 6). 

Yes, the Church, like its Head, groweth daily "in 
wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and Man." 
Your " doubt," " difficulty," " mess," may ground you 
the firmer in the Truth that can thus meet and satisfy 
your doubts. And what if this progress which we see 
in the Future be visible in the Past ? If Man seem but 
an outcome of the advance of the animal world, "a 
monkey with something non-monkey about him," 
what if Science confirms the Apostle's grand hint of 
the unity of the world about us with our spiritual 
selves, " the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in 
bondage," etc.? If there are hints of a purpose to be 
wrought out in them as it has been wrought out in us ? 
Well, it is a grand thought — little more as yet — but 
one which may widen for us our conception of the 
revelation in Christ — the revelation of God's love to 
His children. "Is he," said Paul of Abraham, "the 
Father of the Jew only, is he not also of the Gentile ? " 
— and may it not be ours to say as the breadth of God^ s 
Fatherhood opens upon us, " Is He the Father of man 
only, is He not the * All-fader '" as our old Teuton 
fathers called him, is He not the Father of the Brute 
also ? Forgive this rough scribble, I am in the horrors 
of moving, and have no time to think. To-morrow or 
the next day (if any sediment of me remains) I will 
send you Mr. Phail's direction and the P.O.O. 

All is going on well here. I had an interview with 
the Bishop. He was very kind and confidential^ which 
argues well for a certain young curate of my acquain- 
tance. Congregation still progresses. — Faithfully and 
hurriedly yours, J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

HOXTON, 

March 28, 1863. 

My dear Dax — Your letters, in their frequency and 
fulness alike, serve only as standing reproaches of mine. 



II 



CLERICAL CAREER 121 



I write so seldom and so briefly because I have so little 
to tell. 

The church here is filling, but my hopes of getting a 
curate are dashed to the ground, I fear, by the resolve 
of the Curate's Aid to make no new grants this year, 
in consequence of the great falling off in their funds. 
This is the more to be regretted as my chest is still so 
weak, and the pleuritic pain, which I hoped had fled for 
ever, recurs now and then with a rather uncomfortable 
pertinacity. Indeed, any great exertion, a walk to 
Kentish Town or Whitehall ensures me a return of it. 
I trust however much to the coming summer and the 
outing r must get then, — and yet I hardly know how. 

I am rather lonely, — rather dispirited, — and will 
not inflict further dulness on you. — Faithfully yours, 

J. R. Green. 

To W, Boyd Dawkins 

HOXTON, 

Jpril 25, 1863. 

My dear Dax — . . . All is going on very mo- 
notonously here. The parsonage slowly rises and 
promises to be as pretty as London smoke will suff^er 
it. A. is learning the organ at Oxford and is already 
great in the pedals. My little Godchild is cutting her 
teeth without losing her temper, — or her health, a phe- 
nomenon in babyhood. She is making rapid progress 
towards the recognition stage and will soon know me. 

Managing this parish is like walking on a wall 
adorned with broken bottles. I am blandness itself, 
with occasional raps sharply put in for impertinent 
occiputs. They look astonished ; but before they have 
made up their minds for a row I am bland and civil as 
ever. Convincing churchwardens of their real insig- 
nificance while remaining on " the best possible terms " 
with them is a process which varies themonotony of one's 
life with stray gleams of fun. The best fellow about 
here is a rough and ready " Tom Daubeny," a chemist, 
making heaps of tin, very busy, very blunt and a capital 



122 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

backer. His shop Is the Club of the neighbourhood, 
and he is equally useful at gathering or diffusing the 
news one wants. Moreover, he has a notion of 
"moving with the times," — is " unsectarian," etc., so 
that one has free play. Then there are two " goodest " 
people called Hopleys, — real gold but worked up in 
very old fashion, and incapable of being melted down. 
They are sure to go to Heaven, says everybody, at 
which I rejoice ; and equally sure, I think to myself, to 
meet Puseyites there, — at which I smile. Then there 
is a vehement and voluble gentleman with a slight im- 
pediment in his speech, for ever discoursing of " tem- 
pemomy schools " and also "temporary." Very curious 
discoveries, too, one makes. The most polished gentle- 
man here I found in a pork-butcher's shop ; the most 
learned scholar in my clerk. My clerk's wife is a fat 
Welshwoman, and " has liked you, sir, ever since you 
pronounced Machynnlleth right in her hearing." She 
knew the Gibbestian family who were small farmers. 
One poor old soul, who is a-dying, is " Exeter-born " 
and talks real fresh countrified Devon in the midst of 
this wilderness of Cockneydom. — Good-bye, dear 
Daxi believe me faithfully yours, J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

HOXTON, 

May 28, 1863. 

My dear Dax — I think I have done well in my 
fight against London air (?) for two years and a half 
though, — as it turns out, I am better at last. After an 
illness — fever, weakness, oUa-podrida of come-over- 
abilities — which has kept me sleepless and pretty nearly 
foodless for the last three weeks, I " cabbed " (as con- 
valescent) to Adams this morning. He sounded me ; 
pronounced the pleurisy "still there," — lungs sound, at 
least he could discover no tubercle, but very delicate. 
Then he proceeded that a low condition of health rendered 
such lungs most susceptible of disease. Whereupon I 



II CLERICAL CAREER 123 

stopped him, " Do you mean that this low condition is 
connected with my present residence and work ? " "I 
do. You ought to be in a quiet country curacy, or at the 
sea-side." " You think if I persist in staying I render 
myself very liable to disease ? " "I do." " Then 
please write that to me in a note which I may send to 
ye Bishop, and I will resign at once." 

The Bishop will be furious, and justly, — but that is 
the least of it. There is this poor parish, my sister, 
myself " meteoros." I can't tell what will come of it. 
However, God will provide. I feel that He has in thus 
breaking down my plans taken me into His charge. 

I spent a day with D. a little time since, who ad- 
vances in a most odd fashion. When I saw him before 
he had given up the first chapter of Genesis, but 
believed implicity in all the rest. Now Genesis is 
wholly absorbed, but its disappearance has in no wise 
affected his faith in the four remaining books of the 
Pentateuch. So gradual a rate of digestion will keep 
the Apocalypse for his heirs. He seems to be really 
getting on well in the Chancery quiddities, and perhaps 
he regards the critical question as a suit, and opens 
upon it in a succession of pleas and rejoinders. 

You saw H. B.'s "first." I was unfeignedly glad 
and wrote so, warning him not to " demane " himself by 
taking a Jesus Donship. As he hasn't replied, suppose 
he is riled and intends the descensus Averni. 

Faithfully (feebly, weakly, dizzily, mopily, faintly, 
dreamily, dully) J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

Rancorn, Margate, 
June 4, 1863. 

My dear Dax — Behold my Patmos, a cockney 
Patmos, — but then am I not a cockney St. John ? This 
little hamlet lies away from vulgar Margate, whither I 
journeyed to-day to find a congregation of the veriest 
snobs eye ever beheld. The cabbies were aristocratic 



124 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

beside their passengers. But nothing can vulgarise the 
sea. I sat for two hours this morning alone in a bay 
beneath the chalk cliffs, with a volume of De Quincey 
in my hand, and before me the " great and wide sea," 
dotted here and there with the dusky red sails of a fish- 
ing boat, and edged on the horizon with the faint trail 
of the distant packet. Nothing can vulgarise the sea, 
not even my writing about it. 

I only came yesterday, and so have no bulletin of 
health to forward, save that I am taking more kindly 
to cod-liver oil. Why cods — so exquisite in all else — 
should concentrate nastiness in their liver Science may 
explain. 

Do you want any tin ? — my quarterly all has just 
reached me and I have lots, so draw. 

I am quite settled to give up London. The laws of 
health (Kingsley auctore) are God's laws, and to defy 
them is to defy Him. — Very faithfully yours, 

J. R. Green. 

Write, write, write, write, — I have nothing to read. 



To W. Boyd Dawkins 

Rancorn, Margate, 
June 8, 1863. 

My dear Dax — I see from the tone of your refer- 
ence to it that you disapprove of my resolve to give up 
Hoxton. It is, of course, a great worldly sacrifice of 
prospects, etc. It is a still greater sacrifice of the com- 
forts of a settled home at the very hour when they 
seemed in one's grasp. But I do not see how I can 
retain it in defiance of Adams's warnings, and my own 
common sense. I hope fortune will not set me on 
" 500 feet of clay," — in fact, I don't know that more is 
needful than that I should take a curacy on the out- 
skirts, rather than in the heart of London. . . . — Faith- 
fully yours, J. R. Green. 



II CLERICAL CAREER 125 



To W. Boyd Daw kins 

Rancorn, Margate, 
June 9, 1863. 

Dearest Dax — Your note of Sunday afternoon 
has just reached me after the despatch of my own. 
Exult in having read two books of which I know 
nothing. F. Cerceau is utterly strange to me. Gibbon 
gives a fine account of Rienzi (who by-the-bye is far 
from being — to my mind — "the most remarkable 
character in history "), and Bulwer Lytton's novel 
RienzT is very accurate as well as interesting. Putting 
aside his mere quackery I always note as the remark- 
able feature of the man and the time the curious 
affectation of " Old Rome," and the intense ignorance 
of all about it. For the man himself I possess the 
merest contempt. " Lord John," said Sydney Smith, 
" being little, thinks to make himself big by getting 
astride of big questions," and Rienzi having fairly got 
astride of his had no notion " what to do with it," 
and so assumes knighthood, has a tumble in Con- 
stantine's bath, etc., — risu solvuntur tabula. 

About those Vikings of the twelfth century I own 
my ignorance. " Eustace the Monk " one knows of, 
but then he was not an Englishman. I should like to 
read up the matter, so give me your authorities ; i.e. 
for the twelfth century. 

Since I have been here I have read W. Scott's 
Antiquary., Jornandes's Historia Gothorum, three books 
of the Odyssey^ and Midshipman Easy^ besides two 
tracts of Miss Marsh. On the whole I prefer the 
" Middle," but Jornandes is very fine. His lies are 
such thumpers. The Goths (when they were Scythians) 
rode off to war, and found it so interesting that they 
forgot their wives. Said wives got tired of spinning 
and tried war too, found it as interesting as their 
husbands, conquered Asia, and became the well-known 
Amazons ! This is Sir Creswell Creswell on a gigantic 



126 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

scale, a national divorce a mensa et thoro. Still as it 
gets on the book is very interesting. The enormous 
moral weight of the Roman name on these Goths when 
they were trampUng Rome under foot, is everywhere 
visible. Then it is curious and instructive to look, at 
the decline and fall, not like Gibbon from the inside, 
from the Roman standpoint, but from the outside, 
from the Barbaric standpoint. 

But this is very dull and bookish, so now for a bit 
of geology. Sir C. Lyell was here the other day to 
see it. An immense embankment of chalk has been 
constructed behind Margate, and as it passes over a 
marshy meadow there it has rolled away the ground on 
either side in great huge cracked waves of soil. The 



result is a section like this ^-^y vx^ Then 




the next thing I have noticed is the wonderful sapping of 
the chalk cliffs going on here. Nature may work slowly 
elswhere, she works fast enough here. For some 
twenty feet from the beach the water is white with 
suspended chalk. The flints and bigger fragments as 
the sea washes them about are a vast grinding mill. 
The flints here (I daresay all this is very stale to you) 
are only in the uppermost chalk, immediately beneath 
the soil. 

I am getting slowly on by dint of imbibing sea air, 
cream, and cod-liver oil. But I feel myself at bottom 
very weak and ill. I doubt whether I shall have any 
clerical duty during the coming winter, or lay by at 
Torquay till the spring. — Believe me, dearest Dax, 
faithfully yours, J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

Margate, 
June 12, 1863. 

Dear Dax — That your last letter isn't to be called 
a letter ; that you don't deserve an answer ; that I 
have nothing to write about, and that if I had it's a 



II CLERICAL CAREER 127 

shame to waste it on such a correspondent, — all this is 
so true that I shall say no more about it, but leave it 
to your conscience. 

" Ramsay is with me, and is inspecting my work." 
Did he inspect that letter ? Did he write across it, 
" Scamped " ^ 

No abuse of parsons ! I went to a village church 
yesterday, and heard a mean-looking little man, with a 
\ squeaky little voice " discoorse " on Everlasting Dam- 
f nation in the cheerful and exhilarating tone in which 
parsons commonly treat the subject. I just kept up 
my spirits with a running fire of " His Mercy en- 
dureth- for ever," and put down in my prayer-book a 
few of the miscellaneous blunders. " Hi " pronounced 
" aye." AdonTzedek scanned Adonizedek, etc. Well, 
the little man (who to finish all turned out to have been 
a converted Baptist minister) joined me on the cliffs, 
talked of " Lyell's last book," proved a thorough Lib- 
eral about Subscription, and almost a Neologian about 
Inspiration, blessed Stanley, and cursed the Record ! 

Well, per contra, I met an old Clerkenwell curate, a 
man of Cambridge education and some real knowledge, 
who suddenly accused me (on some chance expression) 
of universalism. I pleaded guilty, and objected to the 
popular theory that the devil gets very much the best 
of it, counting heads. " My dear sir," was the reply, 
"you forget the Babies; one half the human race dies 
in infancy, and is saved ; add that to the proportion 
of pious adults, and you will see that the majority of 
human souls are claimed by God." Upon which I 
ventured to hint that the Gospel was strictly (on this 
hypothesis) " milk for babes " ; and that it solved in 
most satisfactory manner the most puzzling feature on 
the Bills of Mortality, if all this apparent waste of 
babydom was only an economical arrangement for 
keeping the theological balance even. No answer was 
vouchsafed to such ribaldry, and I was left as a heretic. 
— Faithfully yours, dear Dax, 

J. R. Green. 



128 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

King's Square, 
June 19, 1863. 

How dull this letter is none but you and I and the 
fire must ever know. It's a great luxury to have a 
correspondent with whom one dares to be dull. The 
fact is I am suffering from a reaction of fatigue and 
excitement. Last week, what with " evenings out " of 
the Seance nature and my run to Oxford, fagged me 
awfully. On the Sunday morning I remembered I had 
to preach, and was about to run over and devote an 
hour and a half to my sermon, when a marriage came. 
My Incumbent was for once — never mind. He re- 
fused to take either marriage or sermon. So I had to 
preach with just twenty minutes' preparation. But the 
emergency did me good. All my " fag " fell off as I 
entered the pulpit, and I preached one of the best ser- 
mons I have ever delivered here. Incumbent seemed 
rather ashamed, and willing to make up, etc., but this 
will not cure the dulness of brain and present de- 
pression which followed, and has not quite drifted 
away since. My revenge was a very naughty one. I 
have always taken the whole of the afternoon surplice 
duty, and allowed him a quiet nap after dinner. But 
now I quietly walked off to Vere Street, and left him 
to shift as he could. When I have done this once or 
twice we shall fall back into the old rut of courtesy 
and good manners all the easier. 

I went to Vere Street to hear Maurice — and on 
Sunday instead of listening to my trash I desire that 
you do the same. The chapel is one of the Georgian 
Order, a three-decker in the midst, a highly respectable 
clerk, and a highly affected curate. But there up in 
the pulpit is Maurice himself, not so venerable, not so 
grey and aged as from report I had taken him to be, 
by no means (remember I am bad of sight) striking in 
appearance, very quiet, very kindly looking, very grave. 
The sermon is on the last three verses of the Epistle to 



II CLERICAL CAREER 129 

the Romans, he fixes briefly on three words in them 
which contain the essence of the Epistle, " Gospel," 
" Revelation," " The Obedience of Faith." I won't 
weary you with the sermon — here are a few of its and 
his characteristics. In manner — very quiet, very even 
— terse — an intellect speaking to intellects, but with 
something which raised it above the mere intellectual, 
a subdued glow of feeling pervading all, yet seen 
perhaps in no one phrase or point — above all the calm 
quietude of intense belief. Notable too is the complete 
inversion of our common conceptions in Maurice's 
mind, which it requires a little reflection to observe. 
Thus- — religion, he says, is not a doctrine but a " fact." 
But what is the " fact " — the union of the Human and 
the Divine. In other words, he so intensely realises 
Ideas that they become " Facts " — a word which we 
commonly restrict to something more earthly, tangible, 
visible. Evidently he is one of Coleridge's " born 
Platonists." Add a nobleness and elevation of tone 
very strange to the common pulpit ; one feels secure 
against ever being asked to be good on the Heaven 
and sugar-plum theory, because this man not only 
cannot preach it, but with all his mental gifts evidently 
could never understand it. Above all, his preaching 
is essentially Christian ; for it is the setting forth of 
Christ. All that stands between God and man — even 
the Bible itself if it be made a barrier — is put aside. 
You are told that in Christ there is revealed your 
"relation to God." God and man are brought face to 
face as I never heard them brought before. 

He ended with St. Paul's ending — the Ascription 
to God All- Wise. " Yes, it was well that Saul should 
entrust this Gospel to no less a charge than that of 
God Himself. When we think of what we have made 
of that Gospel, how we have narrowed its breadth and 
liberty, how we have degraded its nobleness and life 
and energy, how we have made it into schemes and 
theories and fancies of our own — when we think how 
we in our folly have dealt with it, let us thank Paul 



I30 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

that he left this not in our charge but in the charge of 
God the All- Wise." — Good-bye, J. R. Green. 



To W. Boyd Dawkins 

HOXTON, 

July 14, 1863. 

Dear Dax — My successor is appointed and will 
arrive in September ; my own doom is almost fixed 
for a curacy in Notting Hill, my daily peregrinations 
to west and east and north and south over this bother- 
ing business have ceased, and I intend to take a spell 
at correspondence. 

As you haven't written for some two months I don't 
know what subjects you are interested in. But I take 
it for granted you are deeply interested in me. You 
will like to know at any rate that Tait has been most 
kind to me throughout the whole affair ; above all, 
that my successor is Fowle of Oriel, about the best 
fellow one could have lighted on. I really feel so 
great a reluctance to quit this post, and am sometimes 
so inclined to despondence at being again tossed on 
the winds and waves of mere " curacy life," that I 
cling to these little alleviations of it all. I have been 
tolerably well since I returned, but I still feel " shaky." 
However, September sets me free from airless Hoxton. 

On Saturday the bulk of the London clergy were 
invited to meet the Bishop on the lawn at Fulham. I 
always enjoy Fulham ; no where, I think, is so much 
beauty crowded into so small a space. Compton, 
Bishop in Dutch Billy's time, was disappointed of the 
archbishopric and turned in revenge to bury himself at 
Fulham. Those grand trees, grand in themselves and 
picturesquely grouped, are the result of this sulk of 
Achilles. I met Stanley there and rode home with 
him in his hansom. He was never more himself, never 
kinder or more interesting. He spoke of an old 
Moslem, a servant of his in his first visit to Palestine, 
who hearing of his re-arrival rushed out in joy to 



II CLERICAL CAREER 131 

meet him. " He came running along the side of the 
opposite hill, kissing his hand to us frantically. It was 
the very opposite of Shimei." I thought the last 
touch very Stanleian. 

There is talk of a great Declaration against Sub- 
scription, headed by the Marquis of Westminster, 
Tennyson, etc. Amen ! 

Are you a professor yet ? Or has the world failed 
f to appreciate you as well as me ? Eheu, we geniuses, 
— people won't believe in us before thirty. On the 
whole, it is as well. "Recognised Genius " is expected 
to talk ; and really I am beginning to find myself too 
ignorant to do aught for a long time but hold my 
tongue. 

Good-bye, dear Dax, I am impatient to hear about 
you. — Faithfully yours, J. R. Green. 



To W. Boyd Dawkins 

HoXTON, 

August 5, 1863. 

My dear Dax — I omit apologies, — first because 
they are very tedious, — secondly because I am avairo- 
XoyrjTO'i. Your Pillow researches are interesting, — 
though the less said about " Celtic zigzags on Roman 
vases and legionaries tainted with Celtic fashions " the 
better. The diff^erence between a "Celt" in the 
Roman epoch and a " Romano-Briton," and again 
between a " Romano-Briton " and a " Roman," passes 
my comprehension. Indeed I know no phrase so 
descriptive of the course of archaeological discussion on 
this subject as the one you used, " Celtic zigzag." 

When is the Somersetshire meeting ? And where is 
it ? I really feel riled at J. not answering my note to 
him inquiring about these points ; and had almost 
made up my mind to leave the thing alone. As it is, 
I am very hardly pressed with our Restoration here, 
and fear I cannot give a paper at so short a notice. 
Indeed it is doubtful when I can get away. 



132 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

I was at an odd meeting the other day, — a midnight 
meeting of girls from the pavL It began at eleven 
with tea, and ended at half-past two. Some 150 were 
present, and few other friends save myself and the City 
Missionary, No scene could have been more interest- 
ing, principally because it stripped away all romance 
.,;from the matter, (i) All I have investigated looked 
Ion it as a matter of ^ s. d. Some had been driven by 
f sheer want, others by gaiety and the attractions of high 
I wages, others by the "independence" of the life. I 
] did not find one case of seduction, — save by similar girls 
I of their own stamp. (2) Most were willing to return 
[if the JC s. d. question were settled. There were few 
* cases of violent disgust or great remorse. That the 
i step upward seemed so little to them, showed that the 
step downwards had not been great. We must not 
transfer the gulf which in our lives parts virtue from 
vice to the lives of the London poor. (3) All knew 
the hymns, " Rock of Ages," etc. Nearly all had been 
to Sunday School. Religious teaching has reached 
them, the " fundus " of our population, and the result 
proves that means " so successful " are fallible after all. 
A fact at once encouraging and disheartening. 

Good-bye, — God bless you. Don't come up to 
town without seeing me. — Faithfully yours, 

J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

HOXTON, 

August 14, 1863. 

Dear Dax — It is proposed, i.e. by myself and a 
friend of Maurice's, to establish a "Church Liberal 
Association," with these ends: (i) To establish inter- 
course between and to promote unity of action amongst 
those clergy and laity who desire freedom of thought 
and teaching in the Church of England. (2) To bring 
before the notice of the clergy and encourage the study 
of such works of foreign theology as appear to be 
exercising a prominent influence on the progress of 



II CLERICAL CAREER 



^33 



religious thought on the Continent. (3) To further 
the free discussion of all current questions of religious 
interest. 

The first is to provide a Liberal organization to meet 
the orthodox organization, answer Protest by Protest, 
Address by Address, etc. Such quiet Progressists as 
the Bishop of London need such a support as this in the 
face of arrayed Conservatism. Again, it is to destroy 
the isolation of free-thinkers, to take away half the 
burthen of their position by letting them see there 
are 7000 who have never bowed the knee to Exeter 
Hall. 

All , the best works of foreign theology, Ewald, 
Baur, etc., are wholly unknown to England. The 
retrograde muddle of Henstenberg and Keil is taken 
for " German Theology." A series of good transla- 
tions would be missionaries of progress amongst the 
clergy. 

The thing is to develop into the establishment of 
some organ, periodical or otherwise, to be termed "The 
Liberal." It is also to provide for meetings to discuss 
steps to be taken, etc. 

I am sure you will belong ; but let me have it under 
your hand and seal, — with the suggestions that occur 
to you. — Faithfully yours, J. R. Green. 



To W. Boyd Dawkins 

HOXTON, 

September 4, 1863. 

My DEAR Dax — I have been " down again " with 
pleurisy, — hence my omission to send the books. I 
forward them now. 

Freeman has invited me to his house. I thought 
at the opening of this week I could not have rallied 
enough to come, but I am much better again, and hope 
to see you on Monday. 

By the Bishop's advice I shall take a year's complete 
rest. — Faithfully yours, J. R. Green. 



134 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

King's Square, 
December 4, 1863. 

My dear Dax — Didn't you write to me somewhen ? 
and did or did I not answer you somewhere ? To a 
tap-root (not room) sort of fellow like myself the 
flighty life I have led of late dislocates one's ideas, 
jumbles memory up with imagination, and absorbs 
every faculty in a never-ending looking after luggage. 
I saw Stanley in Oxford, and had a chat with him over 
my paper which he etc., etc. He talks of the dangers 
of " our style " (in a literary point of view), which sent 
me up into the Seventh Heaven. " I hardly know," he 
said, " how to leave Oxford, — I have got so wedded to 
the place. It will cost me much ; my only comfort lies 
in the recollection that it cost me as much to leave it 
for Canterbury, and again as much to leave Canter- 
bury for it; so I hope to survive." He means to 
throw open his house for reunions of the young Oxford 
Liberal clergy, — which is just what is wanted. I sup- 
pose Lord Elgin's death will postpone his marriage 
with Lady Augusta Bruce. 

I met Maurice the other day, — he told a good Irish 
story, brought home by his wife, who has just been 
visiting her mother, Mrs. Hare, in Connaught. The 
Bishop of Tuam is so zealous in proselytising the 
Roman Catholics that he forgets (as great men will) 
his duties at home. Remembering the other day that 
he had not held a Confirmation for eight years, he 

sent to the parish of announcing his intention of 

holding one there the next week. Whether the Irish 
rarity of the Ordinance or the Irish brevity of the notice 
confounded the parson, I don't know, — but he gave 
out " that the Bishop would perform, next Sunday, in 
this church, the rite of circumcision." Service ended, 
the churchwarden rushed to the door to allay the 

horror of the congregation. " Mr. had made a 

mistake," he said, " the Bishop would visit them next 
Sunday to hold a conversation ! " 



II CLERICAL CAREER 135 

Let me know all about you, dear Dax, and believe 
me affectionately yours, J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

2 Victoria Gardens, 
Ladbroke Road, Notting Hill, W., 
1863 or 1864. 

My dear Freeman — I am sorry to say that I 
shall not be able to go with you this year as I had 
hoped — not from any fear of being shot, for I am a 
thorough Holsteiner, but because my uncle's executors 
have routed up an old account of some £,^^^0 advanced 
during my " university career." As I happen to be 
poor, this will not only swallow up the little fund I 
should have drawn on for a few tours I contemplated, 
but has already sent me back into clerical harness here 
at Notting Hill. I really thought I had done with 
Oxford, but it seems as if Oxford had not yet done 
with me. — Faithfully yours, J. R. Green. 

,■- To W, Boyd Hawkins 

Notting Hill, 
December 14, 1863. 

My dear Dax — ... I am here with Gell, one 
of the finest fellows I ever met, full of English fun, 
English fairness, and English common sense. A man 
who " likes his morning sermon to be answered by you 
in the evening, because then my people hear both 
sides." What is more, I have Kensington Park close 
by, and Kensington is a real park. I enjoy it the 
more for the consciousness that as one wanders about 
beneath the elms there are three hundred thousand 
people westward of me, and a couple of hundred thou- 
sand northward, and as many southward, and a million 
and a half to the east of me. All pleasure is contrast; 
and so the many Londoners roar all round me, and 
one walks in a country stillness beneath the Kensing- 
ton Elms. — Affectionately yours, J. R. Green. 



136 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Another letter to Freeman of about this date shows 
that his correspondent was already consulting him upon 
an antiquarian question as to the constitution of an 
ancient monastery. It is too technical to be of general 
interest. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

NoTTiNG Hill, 
January 6, 1864. 

[This letter was written upon an erroneous report 
that his friend was intending a marriage. Green, 
knowing nothing of the lady, says that he will discuss 
the general question without personal reference.] 

My dear Dawkins — The general question is. 
What sort of wife ought you to marry .? Without any 
doubt one who can sympathise in your pursuits, one 
who can help you forward in your work. Without 
doubt also, one who from character and training alike 
is fitted to be a wife in the highest sense ; one to whose 
moral and intellectual qualities you could look up. 
I^Love that is to wear must be founded in reverence. 
Without doubt also, one who is fit — as few girls are 
fit — to be a mother of your children. Not on you, 
but on her, will their character and welfare depend. 

I ask you to weigh earnestly these requirements. . . . 
Put them straight before you. (i) Is the present 
object of your wishes fitted by mental power, by 
education and training, to be a true wife to you ? To 
share your scientific toils, to take interest in the things 
in which you are interested — to go heart and hand 
with you in your devotion to science, — in your seeking 
for Truth ? You have put your hand to the plough, 
and cannot draw back. You have consecrated yourself 
to Science, to hours of ill-requited toil, to the search 
for truth which brings little of the world's fame or 
success. And you have done well. It is better to be 
with the few than with the many ; better to go alone 



II CLERICAL CAREER 137 

on the Truth-road than to join the crowd on the Road 
of Wealth and Self. But if few will understand, will 
appreciate, will sympathise, the more need for one at 
home who both can and will. Mere sentiment, mere 
affection, will never supply the place of the infor- 
mation, the intelligence, which is needful for true 
sympathy. (2) Do you reverence, do you look up to, 
do you see something higher and nobler than yourself 
in your future wife ^ This is the test of true love, 
the test that parts it from mere passion, from mere 
sentiment. You have your own soul troubles, your 
spiritual depressions, your longings for higher and 
better things. The true wife is the type and symbol 
of the holier and purer things for which we long. 
It may be without a word ever spoken, it may be in 
moments of deep and earnest communion, she " lifts 
him up for ever." Could your future wife do this for 
you ^ (3) Again, for weal or woe, you are intellectual, 
wrapped in intellectual questions, interested in the 
highest forms of genius, of poetry, of art. There can be 
no true marriage without a blending of interest. " To 
care for the same things" is the first and simplest 
basis of union. To have to be silent on points which 
stir and excite you because they neither stir nor are 
intelligible to your wife, is humiliating to her and to 
you. And forgive me for reminding you that your 
future course will bring you more and more into in- 
tellectual society — that your wife must share it. You 
have known such cases where men sneered at other 
men's wives ; how could you face sneers at your own ? 
Sympathy, Reverence, Intellectual Equality — these 
are the foundations of marriage, as of the nobler and 
deeper forms of friendship. It is only about this last 
that I would say a word more. As you have been 
much to me, so I too have been somewhat to you. 
Look back on our friendship, and ask, Would it have 
been what it is without that vivid sympathy in our 
common , zeal for scientific and historic truth which 
made us helpful to one another ? Would it have been 



138 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

what it is if each had not found something in the 
other which raised and exalted him ? If I had not 
found work and truthfulness and unselfishness in you — 
if you had not found in me (however I myself fall 
short of it) a striving to hold up to you the Ideal of 
work, of Devotion to Truth, of Faith in Truth ? What 
would it have been without that intellectual Equality 
that made no side of the pursuits of the one utterly 
unintelligible to the other ? 

And remember, Friendship such as this merges in 
Marriage — it is meet and right that it is so. But 
the Marriage must give you in the wife all, — aye, it 
may give a thousandfold more than all — it takes away 
in the Friend. — Faithfully yours, J. R. Green. 



To W. Boyd Dawkins 

NoTTiNG Hill, 
February I, 1864. 

[The next grave to Thackeray's is that of Charles 
Cheel (not " Cheese "), and is of red brick.] 

My dear Dax — Ubi terrarum — where in the 
world are you ? is a question that often keeps my pen 
still when it has a humour to be busy enough. One 
can't write to a man in space, and to address to you 
Poste Restante as I do now is to do this. Letters have 
a relation to time, too, and my enthusiasm cools as it 
contemplates a week's wandering ere it reaches you. 

I regret greatly my absence from home when you 
arrived here, as I should have been glad to hear about 
your plans. Perhaps they are as nebulous as my own. 

I have been this Sunday afternoon on pilgrimage to 
Thackeray's tomb at Kensal Green; the great master 
would have smiled at the break-down of my devotion. 
"You'll find it by the great red brick tomb of Mr. 
Cheese " was the direction. I found the last resting- 
place of the lamented Cheese, red and brick as they 
had said ; Thackeray's I could not find. I wandered. 



II CLERICAL CAREER 139 

sick at heart, amongst sarcophagi and mausolea and 
truncated columns and obelisks and urns. " Where 
do you bury the Christians?" I asked, as I gazed round 
on the symbols of paganism. "We buries the Dis- 
senters, sir," blandly replied the policeman, " in the 
t'other side of the Cimitiry ! " — Good-bye, dear boy, 
believe me ever faithfully yours, J. R. Green. 



To W. Boyd Dawkins 

NoTTiNG Hill, 
February 14, 1864. 

[Dr. Rowland Williams and Henry Bristow Wilson 
had been prosecuted for heresy for their articles in 
Essays and Reviews. The judgment against them 
on certain points was finally reversed by the Judicial 
Committee of the Privy Council on February 8, 1864.] 

My dear Dax — ... I saw the Bishop yesterday 
— he was kinder than ever. He would not allow me 
to go down as I wanted to a Bethnal Green curacy. 
(Don't do as all my friends do and think me mad — I 
need hard, uninteresting work ; you don't know how 
utterly I am getting unsettled in mind and in soul^ 
Offered me an Under-Inspectorship of Schools, a good 
thing in ^ s. d. ; and when I declined it, promised to 
find some post for me where I could work by myself. 

Of course you know that Essays and Reviews 
have got off. The sum of all the decisions is very 
well given in the Times this morning as this — that 
there remains now in the Church of England's formu- 
laries nothing to restrain freedom of thought. Of 
course different people will view this discovery in 
very different ways ; very few probably but will feel 
dismay at an experiment which no Church has tried 
before, that of teaching without any authoritative 
standard of doctrine — or rather with standards, but 
only such as do not fix or determine the questions of 
the present or of the future. 



I40 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

If I do not share these fears, if I exult at the des- 
tiny which God has given to the Church which I love, 

— it is simply because I believe in the Inspiration 
of the Church, in its guidance by the Spirit of God. 
Such a spirit I trace in it in past ages, leading it into 
all truth, but enabling it to deal with each problem as 
it arises. The Creed, the Articles in a far less degree, 
are records of problems which have thus arisen, which 
have thus been met and solved. 

Such an Indwelling Spirit, such a guidance, most 
admit in words. But, they ask, where are we to find 
its voice ? Not surely in the decision of Churches, for 
they vary. On which side of their controversies are 
we to look for the Spirit of God ? But is not this to 
forget that the Spirit dwells in the Church, not in 
churches, that its voice is the voice of Christendom, 
not of this or that part of it ? 

Such a general voice of the Church we do find, 
I think, in that general Christian public opinion which 
however vague is none the less powerful. Slavery is 
one instance where this "public opinion" of Christen- 
dom is felt as a power. More and more as the con- 
science of the world becomes enlightened slavery is 
felt to be impossible. It is hard to prove it wrong, 
but it is impossible to feel it right. The sanctity of 
monogamy is another instance. 

That these " voices of the Church " do not point in 
a doctrinal direction, — but in directions moral, social, 
political, intellectual, is a fact well worthy noting. 
Another notable fact is the extreme slowness with which 
" Christian opinion " forms itself — how many ages it 
required ere serfdom became an acknowledged wrong 

— for instance. The history of the Church is the 
record of its education by the Spirit of God. No 
wonder then that we are in some respects in a period of 
suspense now that we see in part and prophesy in part ! 

Forgive these unconnected thoughts on a great 
subject, and believe me faithfully yours, 

J. R. Green. 



II CLERICAL CAREER 141 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

NoTTiNG Hill, 
March 15, 1864. 

My dear Dax — I feel that, free as I am now from 
clerical duty, I shall find it impossible to visit you at 
Chichester. The new district hangs on hand, and 
drags wearily on from week to week. After all, it is 
very likely to fall through for want of funds. 

My chief object in taking such a charge is simply 
to become intelligible again. Preaching implies some 
jf common understanding between preacher and preachee 
\ — without this it may be fine oratory but not preaching. 
As you know, to be what men call a " preacher " is 
not one of my ambitions; but to be a clergyman at all 
requires that one should speak to the people, and I 
feel that unless in some way this "speaking" of mine 
becomes more real than it has been, becomes intelligible 
to those whom I address, it will be impossible for me 
to speak at all, to remain a clergyman at all. 

Thinking over it quietly I see many reasons why I 
do not " speak " now. One, the most important of 
all, I pass by. Next to it comes that want of " popu- 
lar fibre " which leaves me Httle sympathy with men in 
the mass. I love Jack, Tom, and Harry, can feel with 
and speak to them. I cannot love or feel with men 
as men. A crowded church full of upturned faces is 
a mere solitude to me. A little group of people I 
,know rouses all my energy and fire. What I did in 
I Hoxton, I did because I knew my people — why I 
V failed here is because I did not know them. If I suc- 
ceed again in the East it will be because dock labourers 
and costermongers are not mere " faces in pews " 
to me. 

I don't doubt about this — I do about the other diffi- 
culty. "Drift" is a bad basis for speaking to men 
about great verities. And yet " drift " one must. Still, 
even here there is a greater chance. A "respectable 
congregation" has its formula of faith; if yours doesn't 



142 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

square with it you are practically unintelligible. Coster- 
mongers have at least no formulae. 

I rushed Oxford-ward on Tuesday to vote for 
Jowett, but paired at Paddington with a man who had 
come forty miles to vote against him. The "majority 
of 72 " is in reality a protest against the judgment of 
the Privy Council. Another protest has just been 
sent for my signature with Pusey and Miller's names 
appended. Meetings of the Evangelical London clergy 
are being held, and a panic seems spreading. Even the 
Record has to strive to lull its readers' apprehensions. 
At the first meeting it was gravely proposed that all 
the Evangelical clergy should resign their livings ! We 
have yet to see whither all this will tend. At present 
f the breadth of the Church is brought sharply out against 
\ the narrowness of the clergy. They do not even repre- 
1 sent the Church. What then do they represent ? Not 
I the educated laity — not the intelligence of England — 
but its unintelligence. Surely a very serious matter; 
for is not this just the position of continental Roman- 
ism, and is a Romanism possible without Infalhbility, 
without Unity, without a Head ? 

Freeman at Oxford protested against the " separate 
action of the clergy " in this matter. The High 
Church party do not feel this, but a large section of the 
moderate Evangehcals do. So promote by all means 
Lay action in these matters. An address expressing the 
approval by men of science of the liberty granted by 
the recent judgment of the Church would be invaluable 
just now. I was glad to see your name in the Colenso 
list. Good-bye. — Believe me as ever yours, 

J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

St. Peter's Parsonage, Stepney, 
April 1 864. 

My dear Boy — lam pinned here as Mission Curate 
(or English Nigger), and shall find no opportunity of 



II CLERICAL CAREER 143 

visiting Chichester, Dean Hook, or yourself. I am 
not playing " blackguard," nor hero, nor runaway. I 
am simply a common-place fellow, busy with mothers' 
meetings, tract distributing, and the other " feminini- 
ties " of clerical life. 

I am up to my elbows in work, and must write no 
more. But come and see me here (and forget to blow 
me up). — Good-bye. J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

St. Peter's, Stepney, 
^/r// 18,1864. 

Dear Dax — I am not ^ pig- 1 am a. Missionary 
Curate. I could not come to you, because I was hastily 
summoned to the cure of 5000 costermongers and 
dock labourers. I cannot write for Jones, because my 
books and papers (the few left) are " floating at their 
own sweet will" between Notting Hill and Stepney; 
because even were they here I am elbow-deep in 
services — sick-visiting, mothers' meetings, poor relief, 
and the 100,000 etceteras of a new mission district. 

Ergo — Giso must go into type. Jones must be a 
good boy and wait. Dax must eschew Billingsgate ; 
and 1 am not a pig, but a mission curate. 

I dine with Macmillan some evening this week to 
talk over something or other. Dickenson is to intro- 
duce me to Hardy at the Rolls Office, and has written 
most civilly to him about me. Tell Dean Hook to 
read my Dunstan^ and amend his next edition of that 
estimable prelate. — Yours ever, J. R. G. 

To E. A. Freeman 

33 Approach Road, Victoria Park. 

[(Sir) Thomas Duffus Hardy (i 804-1 878) was at 
this time deputy-keeper of the Record Office. He ed- 
ited the Monumenta Historka, with an introduction, in 



144 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

1848. Benjamin Thorpe (1782-1 870) published the 
Diplomat arium Anglicum Mvi Anglo-Saxonici in 1865. 
Freeman had reviewed it in the Saturday Review, 
John Allen Giles (i 808-1 884) edited a number of old 
works upon English Church history. Lord Romilly 
was at this time Master of the Rolls. James Craigie 
Robertson (18 13— 1882) was Canon of Canterbury, 
and edited Materials for the History of Archbishop 
Thomas Becket (i 875-1 882); and Stubbs was at this 
time librarian at Lambeth.] 

My dear Freeman — I have just come from Hardy 
— the most genial and kind of men, surely — and have 
made arrangements about my proposal to Master of 
Rolls, etc. As you wished I did not speak of your 
review, but Hardy did — that is to say, he spoke with 
purpose of my writing to you about a passage in it 
which he seems to feel keenly. Thorpe, from what 
Hardy tells me and what Stubbs told me before, is 
simply a very dishonest old man, and the Rolls people 
have behaved on the whole singularly well to him. In 
fact it was to Hardy he owed the sight of those tran- 
scripts from which (without even looking at the original 
charters) he has made up his Diplomat arium^ in the 
preface of which he makes his last attack on him ! 
Hardy's message (forgive this preface) is about the 
" copying of Petrie's text." The Monumenta, you 
know, was in print two years before its publication ; 
and Thorpe had free access to it. In the notes to 
Florence he quotes it by the name Corpus Historicum, 
which it was to have borne ; but which in the after 
publication was changed into its present one. • And 
really I believe there is no doubt about the fact of the 
copying, any more than about Giles's doing the same 
sort of low thing. A man who could act as Thorpe 
acted about the Chronicle deserved to be " snubbed " if 
ever man did. I am quite sure you did not mean to 
hurt Hardy ; but the way you put it reads like a point- 
blank contradiction, and evidently does hurt him. 



II CLERICAL CAREER 145 

He told me a long story about the S. Thomas 
scheme. Giles stands in the way. He is getting old. 
He is poor. He says he has spent all his money and 
most of his time on this work, and that it is only now 
bringing him in a little money. The appearance of a 
Rolls edition would sweep away this little. He would 
complain to the Treasury, and the Treasury have already 
snubbed the Rolls savagely for " reprinting things 
printed," — and by a minute have forbidden any " dis- 
couragement of private enterprise." Romilly says this 
minute must be observed, and Hardy is thus rendered 
helpless in the matter. Were it not so, he said frankly, 
he wo-uld give me the charge of it at once. Do you 
know your old friend Robertson has (or rather an 
obscure friend of his has) disinterred William of 
Canterbury s Life of Thomas at Winchester ? Robert- 
son is to print all the important things (not in the 
Fragments of Giles) in the Archaologia Cantiana. 
Stubbs is to hear from Robertson, and I have begged 
him on bended knees as beseemeth so mighty a matter 
that if the Canon doesn't want it himself he will let me 
have it. I think the great Librarian will do it, — the 
hope colouring the thought perhaps. 

After all I haven't told you what I am going to 
propose vice Thomae per Egidium suppressi. Hardy 
advises giving the Rolls a choice, — so I shall propose 
(i) Diceto, — that " Series Caussae," whatever it is, is the 
one unprinted thing in the Thomas row ; (2) Dunstan, 
i.e. the MS. life by Malmesbury, Bridferth, and the 
rest of the Biographies. (3) Malmesbury 's Lives by 
themselves, — Dunstan, Wolstan (Aldhelm is I fear 
being printed as the fifth book of the Gesta Pontiff 
Patricius and Benignus and Indractus, — the last three 
being of little good save for a talk about Glastonbyrig. 

Either of these would make a good volume I think 
— but let me hear your verdict. I know you will fume 
at my heavy dose of " William the Librarian." 

I ought to have thanked you for your Reviews, but 
as it was my last letter was (as we used to sing in Hall) 



146 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

a "Gratiarum actio." Kingsley's is simply perfect, — 
fair, I mean, to the really good points in the man as 
well as smashing on the bad ones. It is, too, the most 
thoroughly amusing review of yours I have ever read. 
Hardy's I don't like so well. You are always hard on 
Malmesbury — many of his misarrangements are simply 
the result, I think, of his constant tinkering and revision 
of his work, and his story, quarrel with it as one may, 
has an interest which Huntingdon for instance is 
utterly without. From the beginning of the Gesta 
Regum to the end of the Novella one is often tempted 
to be angry but never to stop. And then as to the 
Chronicle (or as I persist in calling them the Chronicles) 
surely it does " die out from sheer exhaustion." There 
has always seemed to me a strange pathos in those 
broken entries at the close of the Peterborough Chronicle^ 
— the only one that lingered on. As to the " great prose 
bits," I am quite at one with you, — nothing is greater 
I think than the Conqueror's character and the Stephen- 
Anarchy. But I can't worship a Chronicle or a set of 
them which when I look for Dunstan leave me face 
to face with a name and a date. If the Canterbury 
Chronicle were swept away we shouldn't know that Dun- 
stan was big at all. I was surprised too at your silence 
about a part of the preface which struck me much, the 
" Poitevin Literature " part. I remember saying to 
you when I read it that I thought it very spirited and 
suggestive. I am afraid that unhappy " Chronicle " 
lured you away from it. In general I think the book 
is a great book as such books go, — the greatest of its 
sort, bibliographically, ever done ; and I don't think 
this is the impression your review leaves. 

You see I have already donned Rolls' livery, and do 
suit and service to my masters! Here is a funny fact 
by way of propitiation. Camden, in his Britain, speak- 
ing of Tavistock says " here were Lectures of our 
old mother-tongue, — I mean the Saxon language con- 
tinued down to the last age lest, that which hath now 
happened, the knowledge of it should be quite lost." 



II CLERICAL CAREER 147 

This was in Tavistock Abbey — he gives no authority, 
— but Camden is not a man to speak at random. Do 
you know whence it comes ? — Believe me, dear Free- 
man, yours ever, J. R. Green. 

What is old Parker's address ? I want to write to 
him about an Oxford City MS., a " Liber rubeus." 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

33 Approach Road, Victoria Park, 
May 13, 1864. 

My , DEAR Dax — Ubi terrarum ? Where in the 
world are you ? Behold above where I have found 
rest in rooms overlooking Victoria Park, the prettiest 
of the London ditto, as it is the most unknown. I 
delight in torturing my West End friends with de- 
scriptions of its ornamental grounds, its flower-beds, its 
lakes, its Chinese pagoda, its fountain, its perambula- 
tors, its nurse-girls, its dirty boys. Come and see it, and 
me. Come on a Saturday and spend Sunday, oh heathen 
and geologist. I will promise, since it bores you, not to 
talk parochialia, though I am very parochial just now. 

My life has been so parochial that to exclude paro- 
chialia, is, you see, to have nothing to write about. 
So good-bye, do come and see a fellow ! — Yours ever, 

J. R. Green. 

Diary 

Tuesday, June 22, 1864. 

Morning at Provident Fund ; afternoon with a new 
district visitor, Mrs. Nottidge, in Parish. Worked 
through the evening at my paper on "The Dictum." 
I find the perplexed chronology so muddled by Lingard, 
given accurately enough in Coote. Worked especially 
on the London history of the time in De Antiquis 
Legibus. ' This should be studied in connection with 



148 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

that of the French towns, especially those in Gascony, 
where Earl Simon's policy seems to have been secretly 
directed to their republican establishment. ... A 
history of the English People is greatly wanted. . . . 

"June 23. — The Times gives a session of Convoca- 
tion, and the " Synodical Condemnation " by the 
Upper House (4 to 3, Bps. of London and Lincoln 
in the minoritv) of Essays and Reviews — a condem- 
nation the more notable for the existence of three 
protesting bishops than of four damnatory. 

Read and noted Lavale's Histoire des Fran^ais. . . . 
Read also the " War of the Grand AUiance " in Sis- 
mondi. The deepening gloom around Lewis wants a 
poetic not a philosophic historian, or rather there are 
times when poetic insight is the truest philosophy of 
history ; and Michelet here and there (for great crises 
and epochs of silent decay) is worth more than Sismondi. 

June 24. — Worked at the battle of Evesham and 
the events immediately preceding it nearly the whole 
of this rainy day, with the exception of a raid on my 
parish. I felt what I so often feel when a subject 
presses upon and opens up before me, that sense of 
oppression from crowding thoughts and suggestions, 
which made me at last rise in the very midst of a 
sentence and fly to H. 

Our talk was more interesting than ever, but the 
pace of his chat is too fugitive in grace and beauty for 
a pen like mine. 

To W, Boyd Dawkins 

Victoria Park, 
June 30, 1864.. 

[Dr. Stubbs was at this time vicar of Navestock, 
Essex.] 

Dear old Boy — I was knocked up with Sunday 
work, and took refuge for a few days with Stubbs. 
Your letter awaited me on my return from Navestock. 



II CLERICAL CAREER 



[49 



Life has turned out such a mad whirl in my own 
case that I feel a sympathy with the utter madness 
of your own late existence. ... It seems to me (I am 
old at twenty-six) that there is very little worth the 
longing for in life but a bonnie wee wife and crowing 
bairns. 

I saw Dean Hook the other day at Stanley's ; very 
sleepy, very dull, very good-natured. He spoke of you 
"as a very nice fellow," and Stubbs is curious to know 
whether you have converted him to a belief in " flint- 
folk," which might explain his belief in " Liberals." 
Freeman passed through town the other day. I told him 
Somerset could now claim the earliest Beast in existence, 
which greatly gratified him. He sent me a ticket for 
the Architectural, and I heard his paper on " Swiss 
Romanesque," which began : " During the time with 
which this paper deals there was no such thing as 
Switzerland at all, but Italy, Burgundy, and Swabia," — 
an observation followed by the intellectual collapse of 
three-fourths of the members present. 

My Mission is going on very well, but money is the 
great difficulty. I want a bell, a curtain, and half a 
hundred other things, but want them I must. I am 
hard at work at my paper for the Archaeological Insti- 
tute. — Good-bye, dear old boy, faithfully yours, 

J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

33 Approach Road, Victoria Park. 

[In July Green attended an archaeological meeting 
at Warwick, and read the paper upon " The Ban of 
Kenilworth." Charles Henry Hartshorne (i 802-1 865), 
rector of Holdenby, Northamptonshire, was author of 
many archaeological writings. See T)ict. Nat. Biog. 
" Peonnum," the site of a battle in which Cenwalh 
defeated the Welsh, was identified by Guest with Pen 
Selwood in Somerset. " Giso " refers to a paper upon 
" Bishop Giso and Earl Harold."] 



I50 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

My dear Freeman — " Dear Gossip," I might have 
said, for I quite acknowledge your " god-fatherhood " 
in the Warwick matter. A very plucky thing it was 
to promise and vow for so erratic a chiel as I, and 
uncommonly nervous it made me. One doesn't mind 
smashing oneself, but it's an awkward thing to com- 
promise one's sponsors. The whole affair was very 
good fun. I had no time here, immersed as I am in 
tracts and mothers' meetings, to do anything but work 
at Rishanger and the like till the last week. Then I 
ran down to the Rolls Office. Burt was kind enough, 
but sneered at " the Chroniclers," and didn't see that I 
had left myself any time to get much from the " original 
authorities," which in Record dialect means " Records." 
I didn't dare tell him the worst of the matter, namely 
that I had never seen a " Roll," or read a MS. in my 
life. So I took my kicking quietly, and plunged into 
" Patent," and " Close," and " Originalia," and " Royal 
Letters," hoping that I should make something of them, 
and did. Burt however took a hopeless view of all 
when I appeared at Warwick, and put me on the list 
for the first evening, when no swell would be present 
to "find me out." The end of it you know — Burt 
and the Rolls men ate humble pie, and begged to 
print the paper ; and I returned having vindicated the 
" Chroniclers ! " 

Of course, bore as it is, one must work at the 
" Rolls " ; but it seems to me that the Burt and Harts- 
horne school forget that these may supplement and 
correct history, but that they never can be history. And 
the mere study of them without some side-knowledge 
leaves such a man as Hartshorne open to glorious 
blunders. He spoke of a "Bishop of Chester" in 
1 266 ! " What ! " said Beresford Hope, but was stupe- 
fied to find "it was so in the Rolls." Now in the 
Rolls there was a chance of mistaking it, but in all 
the Chronicles it was plainly enough Ex-cestria. I will 
send you the paper if you would like to see it. 

" Leofric " is on this wise. There are in Langebek's 



II CLERICAL CAREER 151 

Collection of Danish Historians two lives of Siward of 
the twelfth century. Both tell of a like encounter with 
a " Draco." May not the Guy story have been a trans- 
fer of this to Leofric, or the story have run of both ? 
a thing you see little better or brighter than L b. L's 
Dena-Gau. 

I have seen very little of these meetings, but it 
struck me they try to do too much. Warwick and its 
surroundings were quite enough to work out. Fancy 
there being no paper or preachment on the Earls of 
Warwick. What would Robert de Meulan have said 
if he had taken his guinea Ticket ? The only thing 
attended to in St. Mary's and the Beauchamp Chapel 
was the stained glass. A few entries from the Records 
were all we heard about Warwick or Kenilworth Castles. 
In fact there was a great deal of " pottering about " and 
" admiring pretty views," and very little real work. 

As to Peonnum, I don't like talking random about 
Guest, and I will read his paper again ere I say a word 
about it. But I remember three years ago not agree- 
ing with him in his conclusions about the Conquest 
of Somerset. " Giso " will come out in the Somerset 
Transactions. I have no copy of it. 

I have thrown over that project of Macmillan — the 
French History. Dawkins says I am a " quixotic fool," 
but I cant do mere book-making. My line and calling 
is to English history, and I have just begun the History 
of the Great Charter, John's reign, and Henry III. ; the 
last instalment of the Opus Magnum I mean for my 
life-work. It is very bumptious ; but I really feel in a 
puzzle-headed way that I can do this, and it would be 
a glorious thing done. The close I have already partly 
done in the Dictum paper. This is mere " ego-talk," 
but you always make me talk " ego." 

Dax swears he won't go to such a hole as Burnham, 
but he will come if I do ; and I can't prevail on myself 
to forsake my first love. If Stubbs comes — come I 
will. Anyhow, I should like to spend a few days with 
you ; for I am weary, weary of hot dusty lanes and 



152 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

fetid courts and " fever cases " and " district visitors " 
and " infant schools " and the thousand other bothers 
that Mission Curate flesh is heir to. 

I have sent for the Gentleman^ and reserve my com- 
ments till I have something to comment on. 

Good-bye. Kindly remember me to Mrs. Freeman 
and all at Somerleaze. — Yours faithfully, 

J. R. Green. 

A note of this date gives the plan of his book. It 
is to be called " England under Foreign KingSy or (what 
the book is in reality) England and the Great Charter : 
a history of the final formation of the English people, 
and the final settlement of English liberty and the 
English Constitution ; in three volumes. I. From the 
Accession of Henry I. to the Complete Establishment 
of the Angevin Empire. II. The Angevin Empire to 
its Final Fall in 1204. III. The Charter and the 
Fight for it to 1265." 



To W, Boyd Dawkins 

Victoria Park, 
July 29, 1864. 

My dear Dax — My letters have all been waiting 
for answers till my return from Warwick. I only 
spent two days with the Institute, as I am bothered 
with an infinity of things here and could not feel com- 
fortable away. My paper made a sensation and placed 
me among the swells — a thing I care less and less about 
as I more and more discover what a false pretence 
antiquarian swelldom is. On Monday I renounce 
Macmillan's scheme for a History of France (a piece of 
book-making I ought never to have entertained), and 
begin my History of the Great Charter (in reality the 
last instalment of my Opus Magnum, which must come 
into the world as a baby does head first if it is to be 
read, I fear). 



II CLERICAL CAREER 153 

I cannot tell you how I long that, if it could be 
done without injury to your real future and fame, you 
should settle in town. People here are kind, but they 
cannot share my crotchets as you do, or understand 
my " quixotisms," which are really the only part of me 
worth understanding. Something you wot of, while it 
can never satisfy one's thirst for love, cuts one off from 
any other mode of satisfying it, and leaves one a lonely, 
moody fellow. My good humour is going. I am 
impatient, fretful, and a bore to everybody. And 
something, which I know I must resist like grim 
death, is constantly bidding me isolate myself among 
my books, and leave the world to shift as it will. 
Everything seems slipping from under me — faith, 
doctrine, all becoming unreal. Men talk of me as a 
" rising " clergyman, and little know how near Deism 
I am drifting — usque quo ! And meanwhile I fling 
myself into mothers' meetings, and the exact dates of 
Royal writs. — God bless you, old boy, affectionately 
yours, J. R. Green. 



To E. A. Freeman 

[1864-5.] 

I shall be curious to see your review of Palgrave. 
I have only cut open the volumes here and there. It 
seems amazingly unequal. It has, in fact, all the 
merits and demerits of a chronicler. Sir Francis 
writes like a man who had lived in the times he was 
writing about, but he moves with the crowd and never 
climbs a step to get 2i general effect. His philosophical 
part seems great twaddle. I was surprised to find so 
little new information about London, Scotland, and 
one or two other specialities of Palgrave. And of 
course a history of Normandy and England with 
Hastings practically omitted, is like Hamlet with 
Hamlet's part left out. 



154 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

To E. A. Freeman 

33 Approach Road, Victoria Park, 
[1865]. 

[The Rev. Sir George William Cox was an old friend 
of Freeman and Bishop Colenso, whose first volumes 
on the Pentateuch appeared in 1862. I do not know 
what was the proposal in question.] 

My dear Freeman — Many thanks for Cox's note 
and your own. To use his rather Zulu phrase I have 
at once " tabooed " the matter, not because of worldly 
prospects, or even from affection to my Plantagenet 
diggings, but because I think I can do more good for 
Liberalism by staying at home. If I hadn't known the 
origin of this " Natal Emigration for Liberals " scheme 
I should have credited it to the craft of" Samuel Oxon." 
It is like the Liberia scheme of President Lincoln, and 
one cannot forget that it was just the impossibility of 
getting rid of the nigger which made him " irrepres- 
sible." If Mordecai will but sit at the gate he will see 
Haman swing at last. 

I have just come from Colenso, having listened to 
the plan of the new volume in the press with hazy 
results as far as knowledge is concerned, save a general 
impression that the Hebrew religion was but a form of 
Baal-worship, and that the round towers of Ireland are 
symbols of an old Phallic worship there. I am afraid 
I you will be as doubtful of the last fact and as pro- 
X foundly ignorant of its connection with the former as 
I am. 

My own scepticism extends equally to Hetero- and 
Ortho-dox. I agree with Colenso and his lot as to the 
destructive part ; but when he comes to reconstruction, 
he seems to me little more historical than his great 
inventor, Samuel himself Isn't it better to do with 
the Hebrew what we have to do with all the other 
national origines, and read the early traditions of the 
f Jew as one reads the early traditions of the Goth? I 



II 



CLERICAL CAREER 155 



own I think Jornandes is the more hopeful subject 
for reconstruction of the two.. But 1 don't see the 
necessity for reconstruction in either case. I always 
respected the slow, sceptical boy at school, who when 
tempted " will you guess," replied firmly, " No ; give 
It up. 

When will the Shepton meeting be ? and are you at 
Somerleaze in September ? — Believe me, yours ever, 

J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

33 Approach Road, Victoria Park. 

My dear Freeman — I write in the hope that you 
are returned from Dutch -land, and again treading 
your own Somersetshire acres. If it be so I should 
greatly like to come and spend a little time with you 
before the Archaeological at Shepton. Nobody is in 
Town, of course, but still with this heat above, around, 
and beneath, one manages to find a great number of 
cross, hot, angry non-existences about the streets, and 
I feel that my own temper won't stand the contact 
much longer. So if you have an empty coal-scuttle 
or other cubiculum, whistle and I come. 

I suppose you and Stubbs parted en route. He 
seemed to wish to see all but the very things you 
were going in for; so I predicted a Lot-and-Abram 
parting in which he would descend into the Sodom 
and Gomorrah of Hanover, and you would cleave to 
the Hanse-towns. . . . 

Have you seen the Fortnightly with Merivale's 
(Herman) demolition of the Paston Letters? Also a 
paper on " Black Death " which my informant (a fluent 
" general literature " fellow) told me showed quite 
clearly that " two-thirds of the people have died, you 
know, and the third left were all Flemings " — which 
settles all the "Anglo-Saxon Forefathers'" talk for 
ever, and accounts (with the heat) for my present in- 
tense desire for a glass of beer, which forces me to 



156 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

conclude with kind remembrances to Mrs. Freeman 
though she didn't see the Hippopotamus ! — Good-bye, 

J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

Victoria Park, 
1865. 

Dearest Dax — Sick — ill — suicidal — blank — 
ignorant — can't come — can't write anything — will 
promise a history of Jack the Giant Killer for the 
next meeting, if held at a decent place. — Good-bye. 
Yours faithfully. Gone to Pot. 

To IV. Boyd Dawkins 

Victoria Park, 
September 10, 1865. 

My dear old Boy — I have been wretched and ill, 
but am better now in body and mind. You I suppose 
are deep in secretary's work, which they assured me at 
Warwick to mean "the making everybody happy." 
I find the task very easy with everybody save myself. 
How in the world do people bear with my whims and 
fancies ? That kind fellow Freeman writes quietly to 
say, " Well, if you .can't come now, at any rate come 
some day." 

Rabelais gave a description of The Island of Queen 
Whims. 1 don't think the natives are people likely 
to get on in this world, poor devils. 

Did you see the Times calculation that the chances 
against a curate's getting a Hving are 19 to i ? — Yours 
faithfully, Tg'^^ ^^ -^^ Incumbent. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

Wells, 
September 28, 1865. 

My dear Dawkins — Your letter finds me at 
Freeman's, and Freeman has not the " Materials," etc.. 



II CLERICAL CAREER 157 

but I don't think it matters much. The matter, as 
you probably know, is in this wise. There were 
rumours of a purpose on Augustus's part of invasion 
which ended merely in his establishment of customs 
duties in the trade between Gaul and Britain. The 
articles mentioned were probably the first items of this 
custom-house list which Strabo had seen. The duty 
was levied, as he says, on both imports and exports, 
but I take the ivory and glass (certainly the first) to 
> have been /;^ports into Britain. Probably the ivory 
I came from that famous route from Marseilles over 
/ Central France to Britain, Marseilles being one of the 
\ entrepots of the trade from India by Alexandria. 
\ There is at any rate nothing in Strabo's words to show 
that " ivory was in Britain," if you mean that it was 
found there. He is clearly copying the general list of 
customs-paying articles which would of course make no 
distinction. I think Diodorus gives the principal ex- 
ports from Britain, but no ivory. Strabo adds that 
this was wise of Augustus, for the expense of the 
smallest garrison would have swallowed up whatever 
revenue the island would yield had he occupied it, and 
besides there would have been constant risk had 
violence been used in its subjugation. 

I hope this is what you want, but without Strabo to 
look at I speak of course vaguely. I am delighted to 
hear you are on the brink of fame. Tristram has 
mentioned you in his book on the Holy Land. But 
that is little to the Magnum Opus of your " Twin- 
Wisdoms," as the Germans would say. Really I shall 
clap hands at least as heartily as the world. 

Forgive the dinner episode — I know that I have 
never attached a right English importance to that 
great Rite — still I have a conscience, and it smites. I 
forgot all about this particular sin, but I confiteor — mea 
culpa — mea culpa. Freeman has just come in, and 
he has no doubt about the impossibility of assigning 
the articles to Britain or any country on the face of 
the earth. If you print, beware of your Greek, the 



158 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

passage is full of blunders, but that is probably haste 
on S.'s part. I fancy if you are near the British 
Museum it might be as well to refer to Sir G. C. 
Lewis's book, which has a lot about this and other 
passages, but whether to your purpose I know not. — 
Believe me, dear Dax, yours ever, J. R. Green. 

Don't be cross, old boy, and write like a Mega- 
therium next time. 



To W. Boyd Dawkins 

Victoria Park, 
October 6, 1865. 

My dear Dax — I am so greatly disappointed in 
not hearing from you that / must write to you again. 
I can't believe that you mean to drop me altogether 
after so long a friendship. One has so few real friends 
in the world, so few who would really care six months 
afterwards whether one was alive or dead ! I think I 
feel this more as I live longer, and get " to know and 
be known by " more and more. I care for their know- 
ledge and acquaintance less and less every day. I cling 
every day the more strongly to the one or two in this 
world who would open their doors to me if all the 
world turned their backs. 

Trevor Owen spends Friday 13th night with me. 
Come and spend it too, if not do write. — Write angrily 
if you will to yours ever, J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

Victoria Park, 
October 9, 1865. 

My dear Dax — I have just come in (8 p.m.), and 
don't know whether this will reach you before you 
start on Monday. I cant come to your dinner, because 
Monday and Tuesday are both blocked ddij^ by mothers' 
meetings and penny banks ; but I look greatly forward 
to seeing you on Friday. 



II CLERICAL CAREER 



^S9 



I can't tell you how glad I was to get your note and 
see what a fool I had been. 

The Carucate — " the plough land," as it is better 
styled — like the Hyde and all old English local 
measurements, varied in different parts of the country 
and under different circumstances. It may mean i8o, 
lOO, or 60 acres with equal propriety. Strictly it is 
" land for one plough through a year ; " but this varied 
according to the system of cultivation and the physical 
conditions of the country, etc. 

What on earth could make my hairs stand on end ? 
They are too accustomed to me to be shocked at any- 
body else. — Good-bye, dear old boy. 

J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

Victoria Park, 

November 17, 1869. 

My dear Dax — Why, when all the world cometh 
out to meet me, bringeth Dax no congratulations ? 
Doesn't he read the Times? Is he ignorant that 
A. C. T. has recognised the merits of his faithful curate 
and has crowned him Incumbent. My Dax, with all 
your bones, your poetry, and your flirtations, there are 
huge fields of knowledge yet to be explored by thee. 
In plain English, I am Incumbent of St. Philip's, 
Stepney, which the work of Blomfield here has made 
the " crack " parish of this end of Town. There is a 
good church, a fine choir, a capital parsonage, and 
good schools — 16,000 people, of whom 6000 are cut 
off to form a mission district. Two curates work with 
me at the church, two more are in charge of the Mission. 
There is an Institute, Church Association, and what not. 
The nominal stipend is £^'^0^ but various deductions 
reduce it to two-thirds of that amount ; but I hope to 
get part of my burthens borne by other shoulders. 

Trevor Owen expects to see me "before the end of 
the next ten years Pope of Rome, or something even 



i6o LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

higher than that" — the latter clause, I suppose, 
means " dead." 

I long to see thee and show thee my Kingdom 
Come. — Yours ever, J. R. Green. 



To E. A. Freeman 

33 Approach Road, Victoria Park. 

[George Frederick Pardon (i 824-1 884) was a prolific 
journalist. See Diet. Nat. Biog^ 

My dear Freeman — Pity me ! Though I write 
from the road at whose name you scoff, I am under 
sentence of Transportation ; my books in boxes or lying 
in wild heaps about the floor, I looking out for new 
lodgings. I have just cleared a bit of table to reply to 
you, lest I should be set down at Somerleaze as one 
dumb or barbarous. 

Tait is wonderful, but then Bishops are wonderful. 
Burnet, for instance, having got Bonner safe in the 
Tower points out his "bloody and savage nature" as 
shown in letters even there. " He invoked the Devil 
on those who sent him not Pears ; " or, stript of Refor- 
mation-colour, he (Bonner) writing to the Lechmeres 
for a basket of fruit adds, " which if between you all 
you send not, then will I say, as my chaplain Messer 
to his stumbHng horse, *'A diabolo — ai tutti diaboli /' " 
Don't add this to your paper on the " Mythical and 
Romantic." Would C. Lewis like a paper on " Bloody 
Bonner " read backwards '^. 
I Did I ever tell you that certain London parishes still 
^ receive £^\i per annum for " fagots to burn heretics ? " 
There is yet a chance for Cox. He wished to come 
and fire away at my place — supposing I had a church, 
but 1 have none (not even as Tait would say — " not 
even a Chapter-House "). My 70 or 80 dock-labourers 
would hardly suit his views, I think. What a wonder- 
fully good fellow he is — if he is the same in flesh and 
blood as in ink and paper ! 



II 



CLERICAL CAREER i6i 



Lo ! between writing this and that I have found me 
lodging, partly attracted by a desire to study the pro- 
prietor of the house in which I purpose settling. He 
is one Pardon — the "Captain Crawley" o^ Handbook 
to Billiards, the editor of the Boys' Own Book; in fact, 
that odd beast I have long wished to study, a 

" Literary Man." 

But what tin the fellows get — ^5° ^°^ ^ shilling hand- 
book to London, written in less than a fortnight ; £^%o 
for ditto of the Exhibition, written in still less time ; 
^50 and a half profit for the Billiard Book, already in 
a third edition. Ai me ! ai me ! if one could only 
worship the golden calf! 

I can do nothing in the Rolls hne till I see the MSS. 
at the British Museum, which I shall be able to do 
Monday next. — Believe me, dear Freeman, ever yours, 

J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

Victoria Park, 
December 5, 1865. 

My dear Dax — I want you to manage for me a 
rather delicate and important matter. There has been 
for some time talk among the Liberal clergy of London 
of the starting of some organ of Liberal religious 
opinion — not of any sect of Liberals, such as the 
Spectator represents — but covering the whole field of 
Liberal thought. 

We held a preliminary meeting the other day at 
F.'s house, and resolved on the general plan of such a 
paper. 

(i) That it should be a daily paper, in form about 
the size of the Spectator — on the same plan as to news 
as the Guardian — but with a greater proportion of 
original matter, for which space might be obtained by 
the suppression oi purely ecclesiastical news. 

(2) That it should touch on all topics of the day — 



i62 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

political, social, as well as ecclesiastical — but from a 
liberally religious point of view. 

(3) That on topics where a definite line of opinion 
was essential a large space and latitude should be given 
to the Correspondence, so that those of opposite or 
divergent sentiments might fairly appeal to public 
sympathy without compromising the apparent consist- 
ency of the paper. 

(4) That while serving to illustrate the essential unity 
amidst all divergencies of Liberal Church opinion in 
England, it should also represent its unity with Liberal 
opinion abroad. Correspondence to be sought from 
Germany, America, France, Italy, for this purpose. 

Jowett will help and Stanley, but we shall principally 
rely on the rising talent of the universities. 

I want you to talk this over, not as a definite but 
as a tentative scheme, with Daldy ; see what he thinks 
of it, whether his house would be Hkely to undertake 
it, and if so on what sort of terms. Let me hear by 
Monday at latest, and believe me in haste. — Yours very 
affectionately, J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

9 Princes Terrace, 
Bonner's Road, Victoria Park. 

[The Rev. Harry Jones (i 823-1 890), a popular 
London clergyman, published The Regular Swiss Round 
in 1865, which was reviewed by Freeman in the Satur- 
day. The " bears" are those at Berne. The C. C. C. 
is the " Curates' Clerical Club." Robert Maguire 
(1826— 1890) was at this time a popular preacher at 
Clerkenwell, and author of many anti-Popery works. 
See Diet. Nat. Biog.^ 

My dear Freeman — I ought to have written — if 
only in gratitude for much mirth given — who your 
victim Harry Jones is. I presume his real crime was 
in making fun (Jonesian fun) of the Sacred Bears, 



II CLERICAL CAREER 163 

perhaps too in admiring the " scenery." Harry Jones is 
a parson of the Charles Kingsley school, with a sort of 
forced muddy-boot originaHty about him, who does 
very good honest work in a most awful district by the 
Haymarket, writes silly papers, and belongs to our 
C. C. C. We sup there on Thursday, and Cox goes 
with me, so he can give you his verdict on the despiser 
of "Bars." 

I have just ceased from a most scandalous piece of 
business — on this wise. Maguire, once an Evangelical, 
now a " Bishop of London's man," goeth out of Town, 
and leaves his paper behind him — a certain obscure 
Church Standard — given to mild Protestantism and the 
Apocalypse. Two or three curates of the Liberal sort 
get hold of it, and write for aid to me. I send two 
articles, one proving theology to be the only utterly 
useless branch of study for clerics, and the other vin- 
dicating " Ritual and Ribbons " from a Liberal point of 
view, which drive the Constant Readers mad, and fetch 
back the Editor from the salt sea-waves. Of course his 
arrival blew up the little plan for annexing the paper, 
but I hope it will end in the establishment of something 
in its place. 

Send back — when done with — that autobiographic 
pamphlet on Curates which I sent you. When does the 
Middle appear ? If it is sufficiently abusive I will buy 
a few copies for distribution among my four curates, 
whereof one is a " CathoHc," another an " Anglican," 
the third Musical, the fourth Literary. The first break- 
fasts at 12.30 in a cassock and biretta ; the second 
spends his day in getting signatures to petitions to 
" the Lord Primate " ; the third has just set our General 
Confession to a most special and intricate opera tune ; 
and the Literary Curate sits at home through the week 
reading Balzac, and fires off an " Eagle's-wing " sermon 
on Sunday to the dock-labourers at the Mission. They 
are very good fellows, but sich a team to drive ! 

Are they returned home? — Beheve me, dear Free- 
man, ever yours, J. R. Green. 



1 64 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

To E. A. Freeman 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
August 13, 1866. 

("Date your letters," E. A. F.) 

[Green often neglected to date his letters, but the 
dates have been sufficiently fixed by postmarks or allu- 
sions in the letters.] 

I couldn't let a post go to Somerleaze without a line 
to you, my dear Freeman ; the more so, as I had a 
friend of Cox's here last night, and he drove me mad 
by quoting Cox as his authority for a series of proposi- 
tions which ran thus : " It is either so, or it ain't so." 
Do tell Cox that this is wretched reasoning, whether in 
religion or anything else. And then we who worit talk 
such rubbish are " equivocators," which is pleasant to 
hear. "Any intelligent layman would say you quibble." 
Judge, O intelligent layman ! Credo in Jesum Christum 
. . . qui^ etc., is one fairly committed by this to any 
historical belief of the statements followed by the qui ? 
Suppose it ran, " I believe this about Jesus Christ, that 
He," etc., the matter would be clear, but credo in is not 
credo de. 

My view of the Creeds is this. I am definitely assert- 
ing my belief, i.e. trust, faith, in a Living Being. I go 
on to repeat certain historic statements about him which 
may (or may not) be aifected by critical research, which 
are subjects of intellectual credence and not of religious 
faith. I repeat them — as I repeat phrases in the 
prayers, — as I read publicly legends from the Bible, 
— as I repeat damnatory psalms ; that is, I take them as 
parts of old formularies whose literal accuracy may pass 
away, or whose tone may now jar against the Christian 
consciousness, but which have still an ideal truth, em- 
body a great doctrine, continue the chain of Christian 
tradition. Thought will be always altering — we cannot 
be always altering our formularies — and so (if we are to 
retain formularies at all) there will always be a break 



II CLERICAL CAREER 165 

and dissonance between the two. But men take things 
in the rough. Because " worship " has changed its 
verbal place and ascended into heaven, we don't 
cease to call a mayor " his worship," and we laugh at 
a man who refuses to " worship " his wife. Judge, O 
intelligent layman ! — Ever yours, J. R. G. 

Things much better. 

Let me know Dawkins's opinion on this " quibbling " 
question. In spite of a late event he may still be 
regarded as " intelligent." 



To E. A. Freeman 

St. Philip's, Stepney (1866). 

My dear Freeman — I reserved your letter till I 
could look over the Battle accounts, and see whether 
anything looked new in the light of your plan, etc. 
But I have hardly had a moment to do it. I am so 
tired now that I am cut out of my favourite hour's 
reading — in bed. 

William of Jumieges says, locum edittorem praoccu- 
pavere^ i.e. your height. Montem sylv^e per quam adve- 
nere vicinum^ I suppose that means " through which the 
English advanced " — the scrub of the Andredsweald. 
The ardua clivi sensim ascendit is, I take it, the front 
attack. The flight of the Bretons and auxiliaries on the 
left wing, pursued by multam partem advers^e stationis^ 
would uncover the right of the English ; while Robert 
of Beaumont's flank attack on their left seems to have 
been successful, cum legione quam in dextro cornu duxit 
irruens. All this squares with your account. Will 
Jumieges's account seems to me in duplicate, and the 
*' stratagem " of the duke a mere after invention, a bad 
version of this flight of the Bretons. But you will 
know better than L . . . 

And I. have kept thanks for your cheque till now ! 
I have spent every halfpenny of it in brandy, beef-tea. 



1 66 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

arrowroot, etc., etc. Isn't this the best way of thank- 
ing you ? Things are bettering here ; getting worse 
elsewhere. 

To E. A. Freeman 

October 19, 1866. 

My dear Freeman — Don't think me a bear for 
my silence ; I have been simply choked up with work 
since my return. As for "papers" and "Neo-Bretons" 
they are out of the question for another fortnight yet. 
The fall of the year has brought its usual sick-list — the 
Institute is starting anew, and its classes have to be 
arranged ; our District Visiting Society to be set again 
on foot ; the Sunday School has lost its three most 
useful teachers ; the Church Decoration Society on the 
other hand is too energetic and requires holding in ; 
we are setting up two night schools ; and I have the 
whole parish, Sunday and week-day, on my hands with- 
out aid. This for a lazy beggar is rather a grind. 
However, I have found time to do a little reading, 
and to-day am easing my epistolary conscience by a 
little writing. . . . 

I fancy 1 shall be wanting you soon to help in a raid 
against Jesus. It is a secret, but may be told to you. 
A young Jesus man has just got a fellowship at Queen's, 
and proposes a Crusade, in which of course I am too 
happy to join. Don't confound this with any " crack " 
of mine against Oxford. It is a wholly different matter. 
^^5000 are spent annually in that vile place on " Welsh 
education." They have nibbled down to nothing the 
reforms proposed by the Commissioners. They have 
it all their own way. What, then, do they do for the 
education of Wales ? 

First, they exclude three-fourths of the Welsh people 
from all participation in the benefits and endowments 
of the place by the exclusion of Dissenters. Secondly, 
they give such an education that of the Anglican frac- 
tion left only those who can go nowhere else go to 
Jesus. No head-master in Wales will allow a promising 



11 CLERICAL CAREER 167 

boy to go there. Harper at Sherborne, an old fellow, 
openly avows that he sends only his " third-rate " 
Welshmen. It comes to this, that they have forty 
exhibitions of j[,4P-, and twenty scholarships at ;;^8o. 
They are sure therefore of sixty men, but the number 
is seldom much greater, and the fringe is wholly made 
up of men waiting to step into other men's shoes. 
During my four years at Jesus I knew of hardly a couple 
of men who came there without being paid for it. 

But the first point is the most important. It is 
simply scandalous that after all this patriotic prate 
about Wales, these men should in effect turn the bulk 
of Wales from their doors. It is done for "the good 
of the Church." But what does Jesus do for the Church 
in Wales ? Does it send a higher, better-toned, harder- 
working, more learned set of men than Lampeter or St. 
Aidan ? The Bishops shake their heads when one asks 
the question. Moreover, where do the Jesus livings 
lie, on this side of Severn or that ? 

As for their attachment to Wales, there is hardly a 
man of them who can speak Welsh ; not a man who 
knows anything of Welsh history or literature. They let 
Lady C. Guest publish the Mabinogion from their library 
where it lay unread ; and when one of their fellows 
(Ap-Ithel) tries his hand at history we get Comes Fascha, 

What Browne will propose I don't know ; probably 
only the admission of Dissenters to all the benefits of 
the foundation. This is wiser perhaps than going 
further, especially as I think we can move the " Dis- 
senting Interest" in this way, and so get leverage. . . . 

Good-bye, my dear Freeman. Give my kindest 
remembrances to Mrs. Freeman, Margaret, and the rest 
of the family, and believe me, faithfully yours, 

J. R. Green. 

I am in feud with the British Museum people ; I 
have lost my ticket, and they hold out against granting 
a new one ; tell one to " search," etc. This is a bore 
for your references. 



i68 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 



To E. A. Freeman 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
October 29, i866. 

My dear Freeman — Your books entitle you to 
thanks, and your " Genesis of Curates " to a letter. I 
suppose I may write impartially in that you rank me 
either among the rare " Sensible C.'s " or still rarer 
*' Learned C.'s " whom you so carefully distinguish from 
the Curate world and from one another. 

I quarrel with the very heart of your article, — the 
distinction between Incumbent and Curate. "You 
cannot prejudge a Rector." " There is a presumption 
against a Curate." And this because the one may have 
been a Classman, while the other must have taken a 
Pass. Now, putting aside other objections, is the fact 
itself true ? It could only be true if every classman got 
a Fellowship, — but is this so ? What (even granting 
that all " Firsts " get their Fellowship) — what becomes 
of the Seconds and Thirds ? I ran my eye over the list 
of those ordained with me, and of the Oxford men 
one-half were classmen. Two for instance were Oriel 
scholars. One was a scholar of Brazenose. In fact, 
then, you have a proportion of classmen among curates, 
and counting noses you have as great a proportion among 
Curates as among Incumbents. 

But, after all, this is a merely Oxford way of look- 
ing at the matter. The truth is, you have never left 
Oxford. If it were not for cattle plagues you would 
be as much in Oxford at Somerleaze as you were at 
Trinity. Now, taking off Oxford spectacles, what has 
a Fellowship to do with the question ? Nothing at all 
with the question of a Curate's practical usefulness in a 
parish, — that you seem to grant. But what has it to 
do with his preaching ? Really good speaking, — and 
preaching is nothing else, — is a perfectly distinct and 
independent gift : in the Union in my day it lay pretty 
evenly between Classmen and Passmen. As far as 



II CLERICAL CAREER 169 

my experience in London goes the Passmen are, head 
for head, better preachers than the Classmen. Rowsell 
is the best preacher intellectually in London ; Bellew 
the finest ad-captandum orator. Rowsell was a pass- 
man, Bellew a "plough." Recurring to my list, — the 
proportion is the same among the Curates ordained with 
me. But look at Oxford itself. Half of its churches 
are filled by Fellows. On your theory nowhere ought 
there to be better preaching. In fact nowhere is there 
worse. Crede ex-perto, — believe an Oxford boy. After 
all, practical experience is the best test. If I wanted a 
"preaching Curate" a College Fellowship would be the 
last place I should look for him in. 

The truth is — for preaching you want general cul- 
ture rather than special culture. Great refinement, ex- 
treme accuracy are useless in what must be in its essence 
an appeal to the feelings. However one may argue in 
a sermon it must all centre itself in the closing appeal 
to religious feeling. And the force of this appeal can 
only come from a power of sympathy, — the one power 
lacking in "dons" and weaker in men, I think, as they 
grow into some special subject of study. The croquet 
you despise, the cricket, the frank mingling with all the 
joys and sorrows of men and women about them, — 
this is the real training of a preacher. And of this the 
Curate has a far greater chance than the Fellow of a 
College. 

Of course I am not asserting that we have " 14,000 
good solid young orators." All I say is that (i) the 
presumption of a Curate's being a Classman is as great 
as that of an Incumbent being a Classman ; (2) that 
eloquence and the power of speaking is a special gift in 
no wise identical with the power or wish to get a class ; 
(3) that in fact the training which a Curate receives in 
practical work is more likely to make him a good 
preacher than the training of the Fellow of a College. 

I must not write any more. Stubbs comes here to- 
day ; I know he quarrelled with Sidney Owen's paper, 
and I suppose he will be on my side about yours. I 



I70 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

went about your references, but found him answering 
them for you. When will your first volume be out? 
I do hope you will consider whether it would not be 
wiser to defer its publication till the second is ready. 
Men seldom read prefaces, and your first volume by 
itself would be like sending simply a preface into the 
world. 

I am proud of having you two letters in my debt. 
Good-bye. — Ever yours, J. R. Green. 



To E. A. Freeman 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
January 23, 1867. 

[Green's second article in the Saturday Review called 
"Watch and Ward at Oxford," appeared on March 9, 
1867.] 

My dear Freeman — I have just returned from 
Little Bowden, where I have seen much ice and heard 
much Barlow. I only stayed a couple of days, and came 
away rather overpowered with the number of parsons 
invited to meet me. It was like dining in full Convo- 
cation. They were all " beneficed clergy " but {pace 
your article) I found them, with the exception of one, 
Osborne, very little the wiser for that. However, in 
the intervals of Barlow I managed to read the Merchant 
and Friar ^ — the first book which gave me, in my boy- 
hood, a notion of what history was. 

Do you know where I could get in a paper on the 
struggle between the University and City of Oxford, 
— treated as one episode of the history of municipal 
freedom, — call it " Oxford, Town and Gown " ? I 
have done about ten pages of print of it, but I shan't 
go on without some notion of its getting into print. 

I had to leave Naseby to the snow and Goldwin, — 
but I managed to get over to Northampton, with an 
eye to Thomas. Unluckily Barlow got me late for my 
train and so I had hardly any time, and missed the site 



II CLERICAL CAREER 171 

of the Priory (?). I was most interested in S. Peter's, — 
but I can'i believe the date given in the glossary (i 120) 
unless you certify. I see you don't question it in a 
paper by " E. A. Freeman, Scholar of Trinity," which 
Barlow has sent me in MS. and which is full of corbels 
and drip-stones, and such like marks of " early work." 
Anyhow I hope Thomas might have seen it, — S. Peter's, 
not the paper. 

Mrs. Barlow seems to have travelled much, and has 
lived two years in America, — which delighted me,= — but 
lived in the North as a Southerner, which took away 
my delight. More and more I feel myself sheering 
away from England and English politics,- — it may be 
from English religion too. I have just made one of a 
deputation to the Council Office about " poor schools." 
Conceive a Minister of Education who didn't know the 
very rudiments of the matter, — ■ a Vice President who 
had to ask us for information suppHed from his own 
office ! I came back thinking much of many things. 
What hinders Reform ? The want of education among 
the people,, And what hinders education but the 
(present attempt at a sectarian and not a national 
system ? And what hinders a national system of educa- 
tion but the Church ? People say, — lyingly, — that the 
clergy once withheld the Bible from the people, — now 
they may boast truly enough that they withhold the 
spelling-book. 

The present system of Education has done much, — 
yes, but it has done all that it can do. No mere 
quarrels about Conscience-clauses can touch that matter. 
Nothing can touch it but a general system of compul- 
sory National Education, supported by a national rate. 
I wish people could see the waste of the present system, 
— half a dozen schools, British, National, Private, where 
one good large school would suffice at one-third of the 
total expense, at double the present results. 

But what chance is there of such a change ? Just 
none whatever. The clergy know that a thoroughly 
educated'people and that people without any uneducated 



172 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

class would be the ruin of their Establishment. The 
squirearchy see that with it a squirearchy would be im- 
possible. And so they fight every point, — the Con- 
science-clause is a little thing, — but with them it is a 
fight fiar life. They won't win in the long run, — but I 
am sick of looking forward to a free England which 
will appear about a century and a half after 1 am dead. 
And so more and more I can't help looking to the West, 
There is the world as the world will be. There are all 
the things one hopes for and cares for and lives for. 
There is a people, — there, and not here in England. 

Don't be angry with me because I see that things 
hang together, and that it is no good pegging away at 
one little point and another little point as I am doing 
here. Socially my work here and good men's work 
everywhere is simply thrown away. The working men 
do not go to Church or Chapel ; and as they grow 
in knowledge and self-respect they still stay away. 
" Missions," — " open Churches," — are for all practical 
purposes a simple failure. Schools half educate the 
children we do get and leave untouched the masses that 
want them most. Heigho ! 

I have just begun Cox's article on Rawlinson. As 
yet I like it marvellously. — Ever yours, dear Freeman, 

J. R. Green. 

The distress is waxing great about us. 



To E. A. Freeman 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
January 28, 1867. 

[Hunt is the Rev. W. Hunt, since distinguished 
as a writer upon history.] 

My dear Freeman — Have you seen a wolf — ■ or 
why don't you write ? Hunt is here with me, and we 
talk much of you and your doings. Hunt's presence, 
too, brought Bryce ; he turned in to service last night, 



II CLERICAL CAREER 173 

and heard what our Welsh friends would call my 
"eloge" on S. Paul. Then he supped and talked. 
Much of our chat turned on a scheme Hunt and I 
thought we had hit out together, but which (it seems) 
Bryce had anticipated — the starting of a purely 
Historical Review. He had consulted Macmillan, who 
believed it would certainly succeed, but recommended 
the form to be an annual volume like the Oxford 
Essays. This, however, is not Bryce's view ; he would 
prefer a Quarterly ; for my own part 1 believe in a 
shilling Monthly. Ably done, as Bryce says, if it did 
not find an historic interest abroad it would create it. 
He ha^d spoken to Stubbs, and Stubbs was warm in 
support. He thought of Stubbs as Editor. 

What are your views of it? For myself I think 
it might succeed if we avoided the rock of mere 
archseology, and the making it too much " First 
Period." A summary of foreign historical literature as 
it is published would save no little trouble. Would 
you back it ? I fancy one of the difficulties would be 
what to do with the Stanleys and Kingsleys. If they 
were shut out, the thing would fail. And yet would 
you let them in .? 

My " Oxford " still waits to know where it could 
" get in." Hunt read me his beginning on Bristol ; 
he hasn't learnt yet to give up dreams about "Roman 
cities," and be content with the facts God gives him. 
What I like about him historically is his enthusiasm. 
He really loves the thing, and is willing to work at it 
for the love of it. And in himself he is so bright 
and cheerful that his presence does one a world of 
good. What is most amusing is the influence Lord 
Radstock seems to have won over him ■ — he has 
" evangelised " him to the nth. But I remember 
suffering from a similar attack myself once in the 
Revival time, and it passed away- — as all things pass 
away. — Good-bye, dear Freeman, ever yours, 

J. R. Green. 



174 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 



To E, A. Freeman 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
January 29, 1867. 

My dear Freeman- — This is no letter nor reply- 
to your letter, but simply an acknowledgment of your 
kindness. Dickenson has just sent me ^5, and Stop- 
ford Brooke ^^20, so that loaves will wander free over 
the parish for a week or two. 

Is Oxford drunk ? " The Professor of Ecclesiastical 
History will this Term lecture on the Ethics of 
Aristotle, and the Age of Socrates." I cherish a fond 
hope that it may be the Christian Socrates and not the 
iEsculapian, but I fear much. But then is Oxford 
only drunk ? Dawkins is reviewing a book on Greek 
Art for Cook, which almost equals Mansel. My most 
Musical friend is just made Lecturer on Ancient 
History at the Queen's College in Harley Street. 
" Where was Marathon .? " he moaned to me over 
White's Analysis. ■ — Good-bye, ever yours, 

J. R. Green. 

Be at Stubbs's Inaugural, and I will be there. 



To E. A. Freeman 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
Sunday, February (1867). 

[Green's first article in the Saturday Review on 
March 2, 1867, ^^^ a review of Dr. Stubbs's Inaugural 
Lecture as Professor of Modern History at Oxford.] 

My dear Freeman — I have come back from 
Oxford- — -a fact to me less wonderful than that I 
should ever have gone there. But Stubbs piped unto 
me and I danced. I daresay you will hear very 
different reports of Stubbs's piping — Sidney Owen, for 
instance, looks on it as a sort of " wild shriek of 



II CLERICAL CAREER 175 

Toryism," a long " abuse of Goldwin," and the like. 
But on the whole it seems to have made a favourable 
impression, not merely on our set, but on the world. 
Rolleston told Dax that he had heard it " shewed great 
power " ; in fact 1 think it has demoHshed the " mere 
antiquary " notion altogether. 

Vigorous it certainly was. About the middle of it 
the learned Professor went off in crackers, epigrams 
flew about wildly. To me the chief attraction lay in 
its being so thoroughly unconventional — so perfectly i 
Stubbs. I don't suppose Oxford understood the 
modesty of the beginning, or the religious glow of the 
end. After describing the love and patronage of 
historic literature in the Hanoverian house, he dwelt 
on the long sleep of the Professorship, its premature 
awakening under Arnold, the new position in which it 
was placed in the present day by the general arousing 
of the historic spirit, by the opening up of new material, 
by the development of the modern history school at 
Oxford. That school had already begotten Bryce, 
and Burrows ! After a few words of real love and 
pathos about Shirley, he dwelt on the mode of studying 
history, and the educational result to be expected. 
Here came the crackers. The chair was not to be a 
chair of Politics, but of simple, sheer work. Perhaps 
the great political lesson to be learnt was not that 
" the stupid party " were on one side, the intelligences 
on the other, but that both sides had their stupid, their 
intelligent party. As to the educational result, he 
distinguished Modern from Ancient History. The 
one was dead ; we were living in the other. But if 
this made the last less valuable, we bringing our preju- 
dices, etc., the other fact that in Ancient History all 
the materials were known, and nothing required but 
their classification ; in other words, our bringing our 
theories to their arrangement — while the constant dis- 
covery of fresh materials for Modern History made us 
patient learners rather than theorists — restored the 
balance. ' Modern History shared with Physical Science 



176 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

the " pleasure of discovery." This remark was just 
thrown down and passed by, — to my mind it was the 
finest in the lecture. Then came the religious close — 
very odd it must have seemed to Oxford, as it did 
even to me, but so true to Stubbs — the old simple 
lesson that the world's history led up to God, that 
modern history was but the broadening of His Light 
in Christ. I remember when this was my clue to 
history once — I am afraid I have lost it without gain- 
ing another. But conceive the thoughts of Young 
Liberahsm ! 



Tuesday, February 12. — A little note to you has 
gone since I wrote the foregoing. Stubbs's great error, 
it seems to me, is concerning the distinction between 
Ancient and Modern History. He did not say where 
the latter began, whether (with you) at the Call of 
Abraham, or (with Burrows) at the Flood. Anyhow, 
unless he adopts Burrows's definition, I am certain the 
distinction is fraught with infinite mischief. I am not 
likely to be prejudiced in favour of the age of Pericles ; 
but is it true that that Age is dead to us, and the Age 
of Dunstan living? In the sense of " social and polit- 
ical institutions " I take it it is dead ; but if we take 
the deeper facts of the world's life, with one single 
exception, it is more living than the later age. Its 
thoughts on philosophical, artistic, literary, scientific 
subjects are our thoughts — Dunstan's are utterly alien 
to ours. And as to the " one subject," Christianity — 
I think we are likely to give it a factitious importance 
by making it the factor when it is but one factor of 
modern society. 

Anyhow, the distinction was most unfortunate in an 
Oxford Inaugural. Oxford seems to me the one place 
where this distinction vanishes. There in its very 
system of training the old and the new worlds are 
brought together as they are brought nowhere else. 
Men find that they can still speak the words of 
Demosthenes, and think the thoughts of Aristotle. 



II CLERICAL CAREER 177 

Of course, the results are sometimes very odd — just as 
the mingling of the old and new in the Book of the 
Revelations begets very queer " beasts " and odd thun- 
derings and lightnings. Still you do get, manifest to 
men, a blending of our day with the days of old that 
you get nowhere else. Now — had I been Modern 
History Professor — I would have tried to bring out 
the historic value of this fact. In the old world you 
see certain truths under one set of conditions, in the 
new world under other sets of conditions. What is 
the value of the truths ? 

Heigho, what a ditty. Let me review Stubbs for the 
Reviler, and I will say more. I have much more to say. 

The Chronicon " Malleacense " is a Poitevin Chroni- 
cle — so called from an entry at the close about the 
foundation of that monastery, from Caroling times to 
1 134 — fragmentary at close. The entries are brief, 
but good for Poitou, and with a reference to Angevin 
matters here and there. Given in Labbe, Nova Biblio- 
theca, ii. 190-220. 1 fancied it was in Duchesne, if 
so missed it in looking hastily to-day. Better name 
"C. S. Maxentii," so Labbe. — Good-bye. Ever yours, 

J. R. Green. 

To E. A, Freeman 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 

February. 

[Cook is John Douglas Cook (i 808-1 868), editor 
of the Saturday Review from its start till his death.] 

My dear Freeman — Stubbs sent me the proof of 
the greater part of his Lecture, and I have finished all 
but the close of my review. It will go into Cook 
to-day. Cook has replied to my note in the jolliest 
way — promising va^ your book — sending me Bruce' s 
Roman Wall (which I shall like to say a word or 
two about much), and asking me to come and see 
him, which I will do next Monday. "Johnny" or 
"Jack".? 



178 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

I had not intended to say a word about Stubbs's 
"politics," but I will just a word now as the Oxford 
curs are barking at his heels. They are in reality not 
politics but idealism. " I don't want to teach you to 
be a Tory or a Whig, but whichever you are, be a 
good Whig or a good Tory." Why do the heathen 
rage against this ? But I am greatly distressed by the 
tone of Stubbs's note, because I see how he is worried. 

What I am most struck with in reading the lecture 
is its literary merit; all the first and middle part is 
wonderfully clear and orderly in structure, and there 
are bursts of really eloquent writing such as I never 
looked for. However you will see and judge for 
yourself. 

Macmillan's letter (thanks for sending it) is very 
keen and good, just because it expresses the thoughts 
of an average clever reader. That is just the sort of 
criticism it is so difficult to get, and yet which in the 
long run settles the fate of a book. You know it is 
my old principle that a book, whatsoever else it be, 
must first be readable. What I am sure you have 
done in yours is to lay a sound foundation for all after 
historical attempts. 

I am so much better than I was, and one great 
anxiety has rolled away by my getting a Curate. This 
will give me time and rest. But it is a real question 
whether I had not better resign this place. It exhausts 
both my means and my strength. — Ever yours, 

J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
March 2, 1867. 

[The first volume of Freeman's Norman Conquest 
had just appeared.] 

My dear Freeman — You will see "Stubbs" in to- 
day's Reviler, — and must give me a little advice about 
it. Frankly to speak I like it myself, but I don't 



II CLERICAL CAREER 179 

think I have quite caught the tone of the Saturday^ — 
the " periodical " tone, — it is too " essayish " (" sHghtly 
priggish," as an Oxford Liberal would say). I will try 
and amend this in The Roman Wall which must be 
shorter and more chatty in tone. " Clever talk across 
paper " I take to be what is wanted, but I shall find it 
very hard to hit. However I will try. 

Your book {i.e. the Saturday copy, — not yours to 
me) came last night, and between dinner and a Com- 
mittee meeting I read what I could straight away, 
omitting the notes. You know that like Gibbon I 
have a hatred, a sort of physical antipathy, to notes. 
There. is something to me in the very look of a page : 
and I daresay this is what unconsciously told on Mac- 
millan and gave him the notion which puzzles you of 
the book being argumentative rather than narrative. 
Still there is something in what he says. Take the 
very opening (I am writing from memory), the first 
two sentences are narrative, — the third is at once argu- 
mentative. The keen appreciation of analogies and 
differences which strikes me as your peculiar merit 
sometimes acts in this way, interposing a little disserta- 
tion (wonderfully good it always is) when the statement 
ought to be moving on. I thought I would read out 
the opening part to my sister and brother. The first is 
historical in taste and enjoyed it mightily ; the second 
who has no special taste or knowledge of the matter, 
but has a good deal of sense and the average informa- 
tion of men, said : " I understand and like the general 
drift of it, — but I can't follow the allusions." I take 
it he meant to express very much what I have said. 

But you know, my dear Freeman, it is simply a 
glorious book, and destined to give the tone to " those 
that come after." This is the way I think of treating 
it rather than in looking for what I have as yet failed to 
find — errors of detail, — its value, I mean, as affording 
a sound base and laying down right laws for the histories 
that must follow. My mode of work may be very 
different': but my work must be on the same line, — 



i8o LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

the line, that is, of the essential unity and national de- 
velopment of our history. But I feel awfully young 
and crude as I read your pages, and feel inclined to 
belie the kind words of your preface. 



To E. A. Freeman 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
March 25, 1867. 

[In a letter of March 17, Green says that he is laid 
up with a sharp attack of pleurisy.] 

My dear Freeman — I am a man again. Yesterday 
I woke up better, and to-day I wake up well. So now 
to work which is sadly in arrear. Last night I wrote 
off the best article I have ever written on those Fonte- 
vraud tombs ; I hope Cook will put it in next week, 
because I happen to know that the matter has created 
far more iritation in France than we have any notion 
of, and I should like the French folk to know that the 
English folk had nothing to do with it but only the 
Smiths and the Bonapartes. But the priggish ignorance 
of Smith junior beats belief. I have poked at him as 
well as I could, — but with all reverence. Thanks for 
the Savile on the Angevins ; he is very amusing, 
especially in his use of old Mezeray whom he seems to 
look upon as an original authority. Still I am merciful 
to anybody who knows anything about Fulc Nerra. 
That is my weak point you know ; so he shall have 
the benefit of it. 

As to the Norman-Angevin trip, all must hang upon 
Hunt. If he can come and act guide, philosopher, and 
friend, I will come in his pocket. If not, not. I can't 
speak French, and I have never passed the Custom- 
house, and my distinct conviction is that I shall get 
seized for smuggling something or other, " bein' in- 
nercent as a child unborn, yer worship," — or else that 
in my efforts to meet you at Falaise, I shall find myself 
face to face with the Corsican in the Great Exhibition. 



II 



CLERICAL CAREER i8i 



^ 



Then I should of course have to die for Hberty, and 
Mrs. Stubbs would drop a tear. You see it's a question 
of detail, and if I can get a nurse I will come. But 
alone and without friends I am a mere orphan, dis- 
tinctly lower in the travelling scale than an unprotected 
female. 

" Who," asks the indignant Barlow, " would have 
had a window down in a railway carriage on such a 
day ? " — " He might " (mark the subtlety of this sug- 
gestion) " he might have required the same in a First 
Class." Oh, Barlow, Barlow, — the cunning and craft 
of that guileless man ! You send me, through him, 
a tract -about Ritual, — what for? — Ever yours, dear 
Freeman, J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 

[The article upon the tombs at Fontevraud appeared 
in the Saturday Review for March 30, 1867.] 

My dear Freeman — I have just made a fatal dis- 
covery, fatal — that is — to all projects of a post-paschal 
excursion. Our grand day here — SS. Phihp and 
James — falls, of course, on the ist of May, and that is 
only a fortnight and two days after Pasch, — moreover 
there be flowers and singers and preachers to be got in 
the meantime. I should really be glad to get out for I 
can't get right, — the least thing seems to upset me, — 
but it's no good crooning over one's ailments. The 
[ worst of it is that they really stand in the way of one's 
^work. I am ashamed of my delay about your book, 
and your book is one among many ; for whenever I am 
at my worst Cook sends me a packet of " books for 
review," which reduce me to imbecility. Moreover 
that abominable Irish Curate keeps putting off coming 
into work, and till he comes all the sick-visiting, etc., 
rests on my shoulders and the worry thereof 

I thinly that having to do the thing oneself helps one 



i82 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

wonderfully to understand the excellences of other 
people's work. That is, although I always liked your 
reviews amazingly I now begin to understand how very 
good they are. For my own part I like writing 
" Middles " best, but I will do my review work, like it 
or no. I have always looked on " reading and writing " 
as so wholly a matter of pleasure and caprice, and as 
lying so far outside of one's actual work, that having to 
do it as a matter of business in certain time and within 
certain limits is far harder for me than you can think. 
But it is as good for me as it is hard, — and I don't 
forget that I owe it to you. If you can really get me 
into harness, — into practical steady work, — in this line 
you will have done more than any one has been able to 
do yet. But I doubt, — as Scotchmen say. You see, I 
am essentially dreamy-headed, and a plan loses most of 
its charm for me when it is realised. I like amazingly 
dreaming over the fire about a little wife and children, 
but I know that if ever wife and children come they 
won't be the wife and children of one's dreams. And 
so of writing matters. It sounds like pure imbecihty 
to confess that I have got all the materials for a first 
volume of my book, save for two chapters, actually in 
my note-book, and every detail of each chapter arranged 
in my head, and yet that I don't write a line the more 
for all this. I am always so miserably disappointed 
with my work when it is actually in black and white. 
Take that article in this week's Reviler on the " Tombs 
at Fontevraud." I enjoyed awfully the thought of it 
— but all that I really enjoyed seems to have disappeared 
now I can read it as it is. I suppose this is the cry of 
all weak, conceited folk, — and that you will just say " Do 
your best and don't think how much better it certainly 
might have been." And this is of course just what a 
steady resolve to write something every week will do 
for me. But somehow I feel as if life had got a little 
grayer and more colourless now, as if my few pleas- 
ures had died down into " grind." I know that I have 
taken a little more to music of late, — and I think it is 



II CLERICAL CAREER 183 

from a sort of latent notion that a fugue or a septett 
can never take shape as a " matter of business." 

Now — if you are not in an awful rage, my dear 
Freeman, it is only because you are, — well, never mind 
what I think you, because nobody but some dozen 
people would believe me, and they know without my 
saying it. But it's very odd that 1 can croon to you 
as I can croon to so very few people in this world. 

It's rather funny that you who " swear by no party " 
should always want these poor Dizzy-folk out when 
they are in ; while I, who vote my " Liberal ticket " on 
principle, am very peacefully inclined in spite of the 
Daily News and the grandis epistola from Somerleaze. 
I don't see any reformers on the Gladstone bench any 
more than on the Dizzy bench ; and as I think the 
whole strength of the question lies in its own tendency 
to drift, I think it will drift better under the present 
ministry than under the (probably) next. You will 
see {Coquo volente) how moderate I am in my review of 
those Essays on Reform. How they have bored me I 
will not say. 

:}« Hi * ♦ * ^ * 

A chemist In the Mile End Road has seen me elevate 
the Host and wear a large Cross on my back. Last 
Good Friday a lady left the church because I preached 
" with a crown of thorns on my head." I beheve both 
to be very truthful people, and neither to have any 
personal aversion to me. I wonder how you and Dax 
would deal with this. " Either they did see It or they 
didn't," etc. — Ever yours, J. R. Green. 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
April %, '67. 

[The review of Essays on Reform appeared In the 
Saturday Review of April 1867.] 

My dear Freeman — I am extremely sorry that 
you should have to trot about alone, and quite 
agree that the Philippian and Jacobite worship is fond 



1 84 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

and vainly invented. But it is simply impossible for 
me to be away, or away I would be. 

I see Cook this morning, and your first part — if he 
will allow me two — shall see light next Saturday. I 
thought it best to do that Reform business first, as the 
essayists had a notion that Cook had adjourned it till 
the forth coming of the second series. 

I am a little distressed about your censure of me for 
not mentioning Bryce. I tried to gather up the general 
tendency of all the essayists without mention of any. 
Rutson and Hutton I did mention the names of in 
passing as far the ablest of all. But I criticised none in 
detail, and if 1 had done so I should not have touched 
on Bryce, for the simple reason that his essay lay off 
the line. So to my mind did Goldwin's and Pearson's. 
The opening of Bryce's I thought very fine indeed, and 
some things at the close. He wrote to me last week 
about that false rumour I spoke of as to Cook, and 
mentioned your note about an Historical Review. But 
if he doesn't push it himself, I don't know any other 
man to do it. He could do it because he has a name. 
I cannot help because — unless I am by good luck 
mistaken for Green of Balliol — I have none. 

But I am sure after all that you don't think I passed 
over Bryce for any bad reason. I wish I knew him 
better ; but I am sure I could not admire him more. I 
would give much to be half as clever — or a tithe as 
good as he. — Ever yours, dear Freeman, 

J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
April 1 1 . 

[Green's review of Freeman's Norman Conquest 
appeared in the Saturday Review for April 13 and 27, 
1867.] 

My dear Freeman — ... I accept to-day a pro- 
fessorship on something at the Queen's College at 



II CLERICAL CAREER 185 

Harley Street to preach unto young women ; so if 
Mill's amendment passes, and if Church and State 
dissolve partnership, and if the anti-Horne-Tooke Act 
be repealed, I may yet be the Honourable Member for 
Crinohnopolis. 

Cook — "ifthat foolish Gladstone will let me" — is off 

to Cornwall to reheve his (I spare you the medical 

details). He wrote asking me to come and see him on 
Monday, and we had a most amusing chat. He wishes 
me to stick to the Reviler, and not write for anything 
else, as he will give me as much work as I like to do. 
He " so much liked " my {worst) article on the Reform 
Essays, that he wanted me to think over the question of 
writing politics in the big-type part, and have a chat 
about it when he returns. I have no morbid hatred 
of big type, but how my poHtics would look in it is 
another matter. In all this present muddle I hardly 
know what I am ; but I am certainly not a Beresford- 
Hopeian; a "Poker," perhaps, but not a "Stoker." 
Now isn't that in the " Jovial " style ? 

If the first part of my review of the Opus don't 
appear in print this week, it is no fault of mine. Ditto 
for the second part next week. I do hope you will 
hke it because I have taken pains about it; though 
when I read it through it seemed just as \{ from that 
very cause it had an " uppish " look about it. But you 
will understand that, even if it looks so. I am so glad 
the book has taken so well. Good-bye, dear Freeman. 
— Yours in all Johnnyhood, J. R. G. 

Lady Cranborne's motto for the Jamaica Com- 
mittee: "This is the Eyre — come let us kill him." 

To E. A. Freeman 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
July '67. 

[The articles upon the " Bishop of Durham 
(Baring) and his Rural Dean," and " Whalley, De 



1 86 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Profundis" {i.e. G. H. Whalley (1813-1878) of anti- 
Popery fame), appeared on July 20 ; and the Chateau- 
Gaillard on July 27, 1867.] 

My dear Freeman — I ought to have answered 
your note long ago. (i) As to Geoffrey Martel's in- 
cestum conjugiuniy I find that Mabillon and the continua- 
tion of Bouquet, vol. x., say all the row was about G.'s 
marrying Agnes " immediately after " her husband 
William's death, but there is no proof of such a thing ; 
the dates are (as you have no doubt discovered) wildly 
at sea, but I believe that the match really came off two 
years later. Besides, in spite of " the Church's abhor- 
rence of marriages in early widowhood," I don't re- 
member such being styled incest a. There was in fact a 
relationship, though a queer one, dating from Theobald 
the First of Blois, the father of Theobald the Trickster 
(Palgrave's friend). His daughter (Theobald First's) 
married Fulc the Good of Anjou, Geoffrey Martel's 
great-grandfather. On the other hand, his grand- 
daughter Emma, the daughter of the Trickster, was by 
marriage the mother of William the Great of Aquitaine, 
our Agnes's first husband. Agnes was therefore by 
marriage second cousin to Fulc Nerra, Geoffrey's father. 
This is the nighest I can get — perhaps you have got 
nigher. I took a journey into the Burgundies to look 
up Otto- William, Agnes's father, and who he came 
from, Adalbert of Lombardy, etc., but not being Bryce 
I got " moithered," as Mrs. Poyser says, and came 
back again. All this week I have been working hard 
at Fulc Nerra and Geoffrey : the work was really hard 
because one has to wade through such a tangle of 
blunders. The biggest blunder is Mabillon's about the 
Carmen Satyricum of Adalbero. I wish I knew where 
to get a paper in about it ; it is really (I am sure) a 
record, and the only record^ of the curious politics of the 
marriage of Robert of France (v.-Constantia-Robert) 
with Bertha, which Gregory V. had to knock on the 
head. Mabillon printed it and attributed it to 1016, 



n CLERICAL CAREER 187 

and the row between Anjou and Otto of Chartres which 
ended in Pont-levoi. But his examination is a perfect 
tissue of really disgraceful errors. Ah me, the gods 
tumble about when Mabillon nods ! But really I think 
I have made out a good deal about that very hazy time 
of French history, where Palgrave who is so hard on 
Sismondi can fall into Sismondi's blunders after all ; 
and that my first chapter on the rise of Anjou, every 
bit of the material of which is now ready, will be really 
an Accessio historka. I know you will be glad to find 
me at work on my book. Last week was in fact a 
work-week. Besides these two volumes of Bouquet, 
etc., I did three middles for the Reviler^ " Whalley," 
" Baring " (did you recognise them .?), and one on 
" Chateau-Gaillard," which has not yet appeared. I 
am sure you will like the last, and will see in it a sketch 
of my views about John and the French Conquest of 
Normandy. As to the " Whalley " I writ it at Cook's 
desire — ignorant that Cook had turned Mohammedan. 
But it is so. While examining Whalley's mind I 
wrote — " We must wait, however, for a disciple to do 
for the great Questioner of our days what Plato did for 
the great Questioner o^ his. But has not such a disciple 
and expositor appeared ? There is but one Whalley, 
but Murphy is the prophet of Whalley." Cook's new 
convictions were hurt by this parody of the faith of 
Islam, and he struck it out. — Ever yours, 

J. R. Green. 

To the Rev. Isaac Taylor 

1867. 

Many thanks, my dear Taylor, for thinking of me ; 
but even if I had the time I could not go. I am simply 
horrified at the things I see going on this winter. That 
scoundrel, — with his " gold hidden under the ruins " 
and the Uke, and all I can do is to hold aloof and 
shriek. I must shriek, for I have held my tongue for 
fear of hurting the poor. Think of that West-End 



i88 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Pauperising Fund with its " loaf and tract " system ! 
I am working hard to organise something Hke a Com- 
mittee supplementary to the working of the Poor Law 
in Mile End; and I think it will work. But this news- 
paper appeal dodge is sapping all independence. Fancy 
men well-to-do in business refusing to help their own 
poor because " there's plenty of money will come if you 
advertise." This actually happened. How I wish 
the clergy would strike and throw up the relief business 
altogether! I know you feel as I do, — so pardon my 
shriekings, for I am heavily burthened and stricken in 
this matter. — Ever yours, dear Taylor, 

J. R. Green. 



To W, Boyd Dawkins 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
September 6, 1867. 

[The British Association article appeared on Septem- 
ber 14, 1867.] 

My dear Dax — I was wrong and silly to have 
shrieked over my distress, but it is a very real and pain- 
ful one, and your Httle note is more welcome than you 
think. I won't say more now, but I think if you come 
over I may be able to tell you something. . . . Come 
and tell me about yourself and your work, — nothing 
would cheer and relieve me so much. I have just sent 
a dull leader on the Brit. Assoc, to the Saturday. Why 
are you not there ? I have been very regular in my 
writing, and an article on the Ritual Commission seems 
to have made a sensation ; but I have fallen into a trick of 
writing from 1 to 5 in the morning which is bad enough. 
I am engaged by George Grove for a paper in Mac- 
millan ; he is the new Editor, do you know him ? 

Stubbs is here on Tuesday evening. Will that suit 
you ? Dine at 5, or name any other day next week, but 
do come. I am alone here. — Ever yours, 

J. R. Green. 



II CLERICAL CAREER 189 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

Camelford, Cornwall, 
October 7, 1867. 

[Cook had a house near Boscastle, where Green was 
staying. " H." is Beresford Hope, proprietor of the 
Saturday Review^ 

My dear Dax — I have had the most jolly fortnight 
at this Cornish retreat of C.'s ; boating, driving, walk- 
ing along the finest range of black slate headlands and 
wreck-inviting bays I ever saw. The whole land here 
is full of Arthur ; we are here at wild Dundagell, — his 
birthplace ; close by is Camelot, quiet Camelford now, 
streaming up a green hill-side in a lane of white houses ; 
not far from it is the legendary scene of Arthur's death 
at Slaughter-bridge, in a broad, roUing, featureless vale. 
I have had a terrible cough and cold, but am all the 
stronger and brighter and better for the change. The 
H.'s have been here the whole time. I don't know 
which is the jolliest, — B. or Lady M. or the girls. And 
I have chummed with Prof. Owen, who is a real man, 
old boy, whatever you Huxleyites swear, and a good 
man too. To-morrow I go on to Freeman, and thence 
to Hunt, and thence by next Sunday home. Come and 
see me in town and talk over your " Prince." I read 
it with all the pleasure I should have had in reading 
something very good of my own. Kind things to your 
wife. — Ever yours, J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
December 16, 1867. 

My dear Dax — It is an age since I saw you or heard 
from you. What are you doing, saying, thinking? 
E. A. F. seems equally in the dark and calls wildly for 
news of you. I have a notion that you are busy with 
your book, in which case " Silence is Golden." 



I90 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

I turned thirty on the 12th. The day brought a 
sort of gray-hairy feehng with it. After all one has done 
something in the ten years since one stood in Jesus 
Quad. But there is lots more to do. 

Stopford Brooke, a friend of mine, has undertaken 
to push the People s Magazine, — a Society for Promoting 
Christian Knowledge publication, — into a higher style 
of thing. I have given him an historical paper, simple 
but of a high class. But his great wish is to get good 
scientific contributions, such as intelligent artisans and 
parsons could equally read. If you could spare the 
time (I suppose that is your difficulty as it is mine) he 
would be much obliged by your giving him a paper on 
some scientific point of current interest, avoiding the 
Flint Folk for Christian Knowledge sake. 

With kindest remembrances to your wife and Mrs. 
D. — Believe me, yours ever, dear Dax, 

J. R. Green. 

Did you like my chaff of Huxley in the Reviler ? 



To E. A. Freeman 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
January, 1868. 

[Green had himself written an article in the Saturday 
Review of January 18, 1868, upon Stanley's Memorials 
of Westminster Abbey. From a later note it seems that 
he confessed the authorship, and was forgiven, though 
Lady Augusta Stanley for some time resented some 
rather sharp and probably too accurate criticisms.] 

My dear E. a. F. — I really fancied I had acknow- 
ledged your cheque. I have devoted it to a most dis- 
tressing case, a respectable old woman whose husband 
used to be a swell about here, and did much for St. 
Philip's, and now her son has swindled her of every 
half-penny and left her to absolute starvation. Five 
shillings a week from your fund will just tide her on 



II CLERICAL CAREER 191 

till I can get the poor old soul something. I will do 
what 1 can at Westell's, but I know nothing of the 
subject or books. Stubbs the Omniscient will know 
all about it, and I shall see him soon, as I have promised 
to visit him for a few days at the beginning of March. 
By-the-bye Cook tells me you are amazed at having 
the review of Stanley laid at your door and made that 
the theme of a little preachment to me. I can't imagine 
how I could have helped it — however I went down to 
Stanley's the other night to a " crush " on purpose to 
make all straight, and had a talk with Lady Augusta in 
a corner, who moaned much because "she admired Mr. 
Freemaji so much, and there was no man whose praise 
of the book she should have valued more," etc. She 
really remembered, and talked well about, your Battle 
piece. So I said that I knew you had not written a 
word of it, and she was rejoiced and went off to tell the 
Dean, and the Dean said he had heard it before from 
a friend of yours, and all was peace. 

It was a comfort to know that Boyle, of whom I 
knew not, knew of " Green of Jesus." My character 
I am afraid has perished under the vengeance of woman. 
" He must be not only wicked, my dear," said a lady 
who used to like me, to Mrs. Haweis, " but if I may 
say so of a friend of yours, maliciously wicked." Sid- 
ney Owen mourneth over my reviews, — you over my 
middles. Cook as usual "rejoiceth in iniquity," and 
for myself I am moody and discontented with every- 
thing. 

How I wish I could spin about the country like you 
instead of being penned up here and driven mad with 
" Pauper Dietaries " and Stoneyards ! When I was 
resting and idle down at Hope's I got as well and plump 
as possible, — here I get physically weak and depressed. 
All is going on well in the parish, and we are just putting 
up a new school for our poorer children, — but 

I met Denison, by-the-bye, at Stanley's. He is a 
very jolly, simple-hearted fellow. Julian the Apostate 
— he says — invented the Conscience Clause in 362, 



192 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Lingen only copied it in 1862. Did you ever come 
across the Imperial Conscience Clause? — Ever yours, 
dear Freeman, J. R. G. 



To E. A. Freeman 

Bedgebury, Kent, 
January 2^, 1868. 

My dear E. a. F. — Don't be hard on my poor 
middles. I am not frittering myself away, for I never 
send in a thing of that sort without some serious paper 
with real work in it, such as my papers on East End 
distress, which have done real good. And secondly, 
as Cook urges, one ought to feel a certain loyalty to 
the S. R., and it absolutely needs " trivial middles " to 
keep it up and induce people to read our weightier 
musings. And lastly I see no harm in writing down 
mere after-dinner chaff, requiring no thought or time, 
and evidently not meant to be taken in earnest. 

I am doing a good deal of ^S". R. work; this week 
again I sent in three articles ; and I have very heavy 
parochial work just now — so other things have to 
wait, and I am very glad of these few days' outing. 
Hayward is down here, and is good to study ; he talks 
very well, but then he means to talk very well, which 
spoils it. . . . 

I sent a paper on Cuthbert to a thing published by 
the Christian Knowledge, whose Editor is a friend of 
mine and in strait for papers. At the close I spoke of 
Durham as looking down on the Church of " Selwyn 
and Keble." Spottiswoode's folk printed it "Selwija 
and Kebler " ; and the proof went to a Dr. Curry, one 
of the S.P.C.K. swells, who wrote thus: "The names 
of Selwija and Kebler, however illustrious, are hardly 
sufficiently familiar to the. genera/ re:a.der to be mentioned 
without a little explanation ! " I shall have this framed 
and glazed. 

When are you coming to town ? — Ever yours, dear 
Freeman, J. R. Green. 



II CLERICAL CAREER 193 

To E. A, Freeman 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
{May 1868]. 

[The review of C. H. Pearson's History of England 
during the Early and Middle Ages appeared in the 
Saturday Review y on May 30, 1868.] 

Dear E. A. F. — I have spent this week with 
Stubbs at Oxford, and have been much mocked at by 
that modern Mabillon as " pohshed and burnished " 
from which he quotes you. I really must try and do 
something to justify your praises (which sadly need 
justification in the eyes of common men). Hardy is 
delighted with the abuse of the Rolls folks, because it 
enables him to tell everybody that it is no fault of the 
Rolls, but that after cutting down the original grant by 
a ;^iooo, the Treasury have actually handed over a 
third of the remainder to those Scot thieves. 

Oxford is a most enjoyable place. ... A charming 
place, but oh ! so idle ! Even I, the indolent one, am 
kindled to indignation at men beginning work at 10 and 
ending at i, taking 6 months' hohday, and imagining 
they have no need for new reading after Baccalaurs. I 
got into the City archives — saw the charter of John, 
and the Old English copy (as I take it to be) of the 
Charter of Henry IIL : some autograph letters of 
William of Wykeham, etc. But what with dinners and 
luncheons and walks and talks, idlesse was too much for 
me, and I did no more of all the things I meant to do. 

I will do Pearson this week. Concerning my plans, 
I have been waiting for yours. I want to be at 
Lincoln to preach before Venables in June (17th or 
1 8th), and I want Hunt to come up here at once; 
but I want to go oversea with you and do Aungiers. 
Now when go you, and how go you ? You shall do 
middles on the buildings and the battles, and I will 
do middles on the beadles and the sous-prefets, and 
so the world goes round, round, round ! 

My outing has done me so much good that I quite 



194 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

long for another. — Good-bye. Ever yours, dear 
Freeman, J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 
[Fragment in June 1868] 

Thinking over your paper as I ran away to Lincoln, 
I wondered whether you had brought out in all its 
force what your " Fight " makes me feel so vividly, I 
mean England and Harold's outlook during those 
terrible six months before the two battles, — two great 
Armadas getting ready at once from two different 
points of the compass to sail for English shores. 

Why do you think the Barons marched to the fight 
of the Standard ? I quote the Eastern Morning News 
— " because St. Cuthbert had been ravaging the land." 
However, this was nothing to the account of my 
" starthng theories " in the other Hull paper which I 
unfortunately left behind. Hepworth Dixon told me 
that he really could not agree with me in thinking 
that there was nothing but Celtic blood north of the 
H umber. Altogether my attempt to be intelligible 
seems to have been a great success. 

Lincoln is wonderful. I am simply grateful above 
measure to my " Constitutional King " Stephen for 
choosing as the scene of his capture those low slopes 
north of Foss-dyke and Witham, with the great steep 
behind them, and Castle and Minster looking out over 
all. And I had the great luck of faUing in with a 
local antiquary by sheer chance, who while binding the 
Corporation charters had been allowed to copy them, 
as well as a Custumal which is among the civic docu- 
ments. The first charter is Henry Second's, but it 
refers, as I expected, to one of Henry First's; every 
step I take confirms my theory about the latter. I 
think the " law men " go down to John's time. Foss- 
dyke, the canal which joins Witham and Trent, is 
credited to Henry First; that the Lincoln burghers 
should have carried out thirty miles of canalising gives 



II CLERICAL CAREER 195 

one a view of the twelfth century and its industry very 
different from ordinary notions. — Good-bye, ever yours, 

J. R. Green. 

To Edward Denison 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
August 6, 1868. 

[Denison was standing for Newark.] 

My dear Denison — Your position at Newark is 
wonderfully like mine at St. Philip's, and if one made 
one's position in this world, I think both of us would 
deserve a good whipping. But we don't make 'em : 
we step into them, and so we have a right to a good 
grumble. . . . My ignorance of Newark is complete. 
I once ate a bun at its refreshment-room, and was told 
over the counter that King John slept in a four-poster 
in the chief town inn. 1 know no more about the 
place than that great historic fact, and the more 
modern one of the extreme staleness of that bun. 

I am most unpopular now for two reasons : first 
that I have aided vigorously to start Newton ; secondly, 
that on Sunday I praught a sermon on the sins of 
electors — apathy, immorality, selfishness, party-spirit, 
— which hasn't found a single friend, and sent the 
offertory down to zero. All this I prophesied, and if 
only their irritation sets them thinking a little I shan't 
object to their irritation. What depresses me most is 
the low tone rather than the wrong tone of the better 
men here. They wouldn't suffer a really bad man, or 
pardon his advocating a really bad cause ; but they 
have no objection to making a little profit over the 
support of a good man, nor to his making a good 
thing out of a similar course in local or national 
politics. To higher arguments they are utterly in- 
sensible; I could not help feehng how differently an 
audience of artisans would have received what I said 
last Sunday. Of course the latter have their faults, 
but they have a certain enthusiasm from which the 



196 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Mile Ender proper is wholly free. But the long and 
short of it is that I am in a false position here — that, 
like you at Newark, I could be perfectly comfortable 
with the Protestants outside ; while my Catholics only 
back me because my preaching amuses them, and 
because they can't get the true Catholic ticket. Only, 
thank Heaven, I can say as many " imprudent " things 
as I please. 

I am awfully tired with our excursion yesterday to 
Rosherville — a great success — the children delighted, 
sunshine, and nobody lost or hurt. One never realises 
what the monotony and narrowness of the life and 
thoughts of the ordinary shopkeeper is, till one spends 
a whole day in the midst of them, as one does on the 
excursion day once a year ; twice a year it would kill 
me. Luckily I have immense social powers with these 
people, and they all voted me most chatty and agree- 
able ; but the blank burthen of the day was indescrib- 
able. I retreated from it coming home into a corner 
and found a charming little maiden of 17 who 
prattled to me of everything in heaven and earth, 
with a great many " Mr. Greens " in every sentence. 
I told her I usually carried a book in my pocket in 
case I had nothing to do for half an hour. " Oh, 
yes," she said, " I suppose it is the Bible." Ah, me ! 
it was the Physiologie du gout. But are these the 
thoughts of little maidens concerning parsons — are we 
ideals with perennial Bibles in our pockets ? 

Forgive this long chat and believe me yours 
ever, J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

New University Club, 
St. James's Street, 
August 19 (i868). 

[Morkere and Eadwine are the Mercian earls to 
whom, according to Freeman, Green was too favourable 
on account of his birth at Oxford. Green's Review of 



II CLERICAL CAREER 197 

Freeman's Norman Conquest (vol. ii.) appeared in the 
Saturday Review for August 15, 22, and 29, 1868.] 

My dear Freeman — It is too late for to-day's 
post, but I can't put your book aside without a word. 
It reached me last night, and I have been working at 
it to-day ; doing the Harold-Reign, i.e. the accession 
to April and the Stamford Bridge chapter for my 
first review. The William-life and Senlac will make a 
second, and Harwood must give me a third for the 
Inter-regnum and general talk. What I have read I 
think up to your best mark. I remember seeing some 
proof joi the coronation part at Cox's, and thinking 
it too long. Either you have condensed it or I was 
quite wrong. Indeed the one change I should have 
recommended would have lengthened it ; i.e. I should 
for the general reader's sake have dwelt much more 
on the Investiture part of the Coronation Service, and 
worked in all the history of each vestment which at 
present you have left in the references of your notes. 
I can't quite understand your theory of the Chronicles ; 
I think you unjust to the Norman writers as far as 
the Bequest and Election are concerned ; I still think 
you a perfect monomaniac on the subject of Morkere 
and Eadwine. But I will forgive you even sins against 
my own Earls for having brought out that Northumbrian 
hesitation to accept Harold (/ had never noticed it), 
— the real difficulties of Harold in that long wait on the 
coast, — and the moral effect of the Comet. As for 
Stamford Bridge I am almost certain I shall like the 
style of your battle-painting better here than when I 
come to Senlac. It is good prose, and I like good 
prose better than all that " strenuous " prose which to 
my ear is neither prose nor poetry, but like somebody 
holloaing. However I shall know better when I reach 
Senlac. Moreover your telling the old saga and then 
rejecting it and giving a tale which is a great deal 
better because it is truer, is the best moral lesson for 
young history beginners I ever saw. I doubted about 



198 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

the saga a bit when you read it to me, but now I 
read it in print I see you were quite right; it is a 
good bit of rehef against the other picture. As far as 
I have gone in the appendices 1 hke the Tapestry one 
best, the "Bequest" one least; it is too "special 
pleading" in tone, and Florence is worked to death. 
The most important historical discovery seems to me 
to be your suggestion about the date of Harold's 
marriage. I feel like a fool for not having thought of 
it. As to its accuracy, though I daresay I shall find 
more about it in your Norman negotiation part, I am 
simply converted to an intense belief. People never 
write sheer nonsense, and I see what sheer nonsense 
those Norman statements must be but for this. How 
very odd they never suggested it to one before. 

As to Switzerland I simply go there on my way to 
Italy, not to see it or study its people, but simply as 
a concession to Brooke, and to get a little tone and 
air. Tou shall take me some day to the Landes- 
gemeinde. At present I am thinking more of Italian 
municipalities than of Swiss. But I would much I had 
seen the Aldermen of Kenfig. I read it out to Bryce, 
and we both voted them more Itahan than anything 
we knew in England. TVho is A. B. ? Was he a 
modern history first ? There was somebody I know 
got a modern history first out of Jesus, or a modern 
history second or something ; I know it cured me of 
any wish to distinguish myself in that school. Do 
you know, when I was at Oxford last term, the dons 
asked me to dinner and Common room, and positively 
crawled. One brute who bullied me into an illness 
years ago told me I was " an honour to my College," 
and God knows what ! And then you wonder that I 
despise Welshmen ! Let me put you up to a secret. 
I don't love Edward First (as I showed t'other day), 
but I wouldn't abuse him so, if he had really hung 
those bards. But he didn't. 

Good-bye. I am so glad this volume is out — you 



II 



CLERICAL CAREER 199 



will take your place now. What a stiff business you 
will have in the next. I don't see at all why after it 
you should not give us the history of the two Norman 
kings, and then wind up with a sixth. Think over it. 
Henry L belongs as much to a History of the Conquest 
as Cnut, and is a deal better worth doing. Amen ! — 
Good-bye again, ever yours, dear Freeman, 

J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

New University Club, 
St. James's Street \_August 1868]. 

My dear Freeman — This is simply to tell you 
I have done it — appendices and all — and vote for the 
greatest living historian we have. Not that that will 
astonish you, — or that if I say it as I shall in print you 
will do anything but write an immensely long letter 
blowing me up ! But never mind, that " Senlac " is 
magnificent. It isn't a bit overdone ; and I won't say 
anything more irreverent about "holloaing in a wood." 
When edition 1 comes, run your pen through two- 
thirds of the " Now "s and three-quarters of the 
"Then"s. The first always makes me think you 
have just awoke from a five minutes' nap and set to 
again ; the second is what I call " the showman's 
demonstrative." As to the Earls you are as mad as 
a hatter or else all England was as mad as a hatter ; 
and as to Florence I can fancy that libellous shaven-pate 
patting his paunch in Purgatory and saying " Tell a 
lie — tell a lie — tell — a — lie, and in some seven cen- 
turies you will at last get a swell to believe it." 

But never mind — you are the G*^- H"- now living, 
and you have a right to be as mad as a hatter, and to 
believe what you please. Q.E.D. — Good-bye. 

J. R. G. 

Love to old Dax. Tell him I have got his bank- 
book, and his balance is preposterous ! 



200 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 



To E. A, Freeman 

New University Club, 
St. James's Street, 1868. 

My dear Freeman — I have just read the Edin- 
burgh article on your first two volumes : is it Cox's ? 
Anyhow and whosesoever it is, although / believe it is 
written with good will, it is very lop-sided and unfair 
in its merely negative tone. I don't know that there 
are many flaws pointed out which I hadn't pointed out 
before, but I aimed certainly at pointing out the merits 
of the book as well, and about these the article says 
very little indeed, although it gives one the notion of 
its writer really appreciating them in some latent way. 
Moreover there is a good deal of ignorance in his 
censuring the very best point in your book — I mean 
your taking the Conquest out of the category of isolated 
events and showing its beginnings in Cnut, Robert, 
etc. So too in what he says about the Apulian Con- 
quest. What, again, does he mean by " the mythical 
times of Hengist and Rowena " ? 

Of course I adhere to all I said of old about style, 
etc., and there is a good deal on that point very 
soundly put in the article ; but it is most unfortunate 
that it should have come out just before your " Battle " 
volume. It has half set me longing (in spite of my 
vows) to do that and its predecessor for some Quarterly 
— " the " Quarterly perhaps which has done nought of 
you since the first volume. What do you say ? 

Anyhow, I just wanted to say this, my dear Free- 
man (baited thereunto by the Edinburgh), that there 
are no books oftener in my hands than yours ; and 
that without a bit recanting what I said at first about 
them my admiration for them grows every day. That's 
the best way to test a book, see how it wears when 
you work at it ; and yours wears well. I wish I was 
down with you to talk over these matters — it's poor 
work writing. . . . 



II 



CLERICAL CAREER 201 



Comfort yourself concerning Charles Kingsley. Like 
Nebuchadnezzar he has gone to grass — has abandoned 
history and taken to Botany and the sciences. Sic 
pereant inimici Domini ! The rumour of his resignation 
of the professorship is true enough. Is there anything 
to prevent your going in for it ? — it isn't confined to 
Cambridge men as far as I can gather ; and if it were, 
a guinea ad eundem would settle the difficulty. You see, 
it isn't likely that Stubbs will go into the sixth heaven 
of Deaneries now. . . . 

Good-bye ; forgive me all my trespasses as you 
hope to be forgiven and believe me, my dear Freeman, 
yours' in all loyalty, J. R. G. 



To Edward Denison 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
September 21, 1868. 

My dear Denison — Higgs has been here this 
morning with a sheaf of your speeches, and left my 
conscience sore with remembrances of a certain un- 
answered letter. What a thriving business you seem 
to be doing at Newark, with your bodyguard of work- 
ing men and " lady canvassers " seducing the immaculate 
voter ! I am really delighted, though I fully expected 
it. So far as I see anything of them here, they seem 
more sensible and less of the potwalloper type than I 
had looked for. My cowardice was a little frightened 
at first by your plainness of speech ; but it seems to 
pay, which brightens one's views of human nature a 
little. Anyhow, as far as the papers go, your pros- 
pects seem encouraging enough. Here we are in the 
most awful political muddle. Beales I take to be a 
certain M.P., the working men backing him en masse ; 
Ayrton and Samuda to be quite out of the running, 
Coope having spoilt Samuda's and Newton Ayrton's 
chance.- But both will go to the poll, and if they 
do it will be a very difficult business to get Newton 



202 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

in and keep Coope out. Beales and a Tory for 
the Tower Hamlets will set all the ingenious Morleys 
and Huttons speculating for months on the " new 
constituencies." 

Higgs is certainly getting your roughs into smooth 
habits. I think the school is going on well. I have 
been down there this morning to see whether I could 
inveigle the other trustees into allowing me to use the 
back room two mornings in the week for a sick-kitchen. 
A grate in the empty fireplace and the use of your 
soup apparatus would be all that I want. Higgs could 
manage to leave us the little room on Wednesday 
mornings, and on Saturday it is of course free. My 
new nurse will do all the work ; and I think the money 
would do more good than it does now in tickets. I 
hope you haven't forgotten my prayer for a " lady 
visitor." I will take all the work off her hands, if only 
I may rest sub nominis umbra. We must get up Penny 
Readings (without the penny) through the winter at the 
school church. I have plenty of help promised, and 
you must come and read Pickwick as an M.P. Oh ! if 
one might only put it on the bills. 

I am buried in corn and flowers ; our harvest festival 
is on Thursday. If I knew your people better I would 
ask them to send me flowers. But I really am grow- 
ing the mendicant "parson," whom I am so fond of 
squibbing. 

Good-bye, with best wishes for your success at 
Newark. — Believe me, faithfully yours, 

J. R. Green. 

To Edward Denison 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
October i8, 1868. 

My dear Denison — . . . I am mighty uneasy 
about the look of things. Here we are, no forwarder 
than last autumn, and though business is brisker people 
have got more habituated to mendicancy. The parsons 



II 



CLERICAL CAREER 203 



of our rural deanery held a meeting about it on Tues- 
day. Unhappily my confinement in town has told on 
my head, etc., and I was obliged to run out if for a few 
days. I had half a mind to run down to Newark and 
see what you were doing ; however I went to Essex 
instead, and am better now. It is these money-matters 
which wear my life out. Imagine the end of our 
school year coming, and my having to pay out of pocket 
a deficiency of ^43. It simply leaves me without a 
penny. Do forgive my groaning. I put as bright a 
face on it as I can in the parish, but these incessant 
money-worries simply kill all vigour of life and thought 
in me.' How can I do my book when this next quarter 
to escape bankruptcy I shall have to send in every 
week two articles to the S. R., and write an article for 
the ^arlerly, besides my parochial engagements ? I 
think my pride must have come down in the world 
when I actually asked a man for a living the other day. 
However it went elsewhere — to a very good and fit 
fellow. 

By-the-bye — as you are a prisoner at Newark — 
might we put in the grate you purposed in the Baker 
Street school ? I am anxious to set about our soup- 
kitchen at once, and to break finally with the " meat- 
tickets." It will be a great economy and a better 
principle. 

I heard good news about you from Newark itself. 
A schoolfellow of my sister's (Tory people) writes to 
her that they regard you as a " second Gladstone." 
Take care not to be a Judas Iscariot like your illustrious 
first. Here Newton's chances have gone backwards ; 
the artisans rallying round Beales, and the Beales's party 
breaking thoroughly with Newton. ... A certain 
Potts, a Limehouse grocer, proclaims his secesh from 
Newton " in consequence of his alliance with a Puseyite 
priest." The Tower Hamlets Advertiser sarcastically 
adds, "The friends of the reverend gentleman declare 
the charge to be unfounded ! " You see what Glad- 



204 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

stone is and what I am. What are you ? Good-bye ; 
all possible good wishes. — Yours ever, 

J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
October 20, 1868. 

My dear Dawkins — . . . The most amazing 
thing which has happened to me since I saw you is a 
sermon which Haweis praught at a church hard by 
here on "Apathy on Politics." It was the first of a 
course in which I am to figure ; and although we had 
agreed that party politics, as such, were to be excluded, 
and only the general principles urged upon which all 
political life — if it be sound — must rest, H. R. H. got 
up and for an hour delivered a wild platform speech in 
favour of Red Republicanism and Beales. There was 
a great slamming of pew doors, and the whole scene 

was chaos. What the 1 am to say next Sunday 

heaven only knows. — ... Ever yours faithfully, 

J. R. Green. 

To Edward Denison 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
October 27, 1868. 

My dear Denison — I ought at once to have 
acknowledged the receipt of your cheque, and to have 
thanked you for kindness so considerate. What you 
say of the parish is perfectly true, but I find it easier 
to get money for anything than for schools. What 
between the parsons and the Government grant all 
sense of local responsibility seems to have disappeared. 
I am however going to make my third trial, and to 
call together a private meeting before formally canvass- 
ing the neighbourhood. What I should have done 
but for you I really hardly know. But those school 
accounts once cleared off (as they are) I see my way 
as I haven't seen it for months. 



II CLERICAL CAREER 205 

Could you throw into shape your thoughts on the 
lessons taught by the French relief system and our own 
as to the question you hint at in your paper, viz. the 
advisability of leaving pauperism to the common social 
conditions of pity, etc., rather than of any organisation, 
legal or charitable? Is not this your contention? — 
Ever yours, in great hurry, J. R. Green. 



To Edward Denison 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
November 19, 1868. 

My' dear Denison — I need not tell you how 
heartily I congratulate you on your election. It is in 
fact the one cheering fact for me personally in the 
whole business. So far as the men I care about are 
concerned, with the exception of Fawcett and Somerset 
Beaumont, Newark is the only place where I have not 
had a sound beating. The last was a Palmerstonian 
Parliament, but this out-Palmerstons Palmerston. 
" No philosophers, no artisans," seems to have been 
the winning cry. 

Here at the last moment every one rushed to Ayrton 
and left Newton in the gutter. The votes he actually 
polled were really Tory votes, and would have gone to 
Coope had he retired. Samuda goes in by the force of 
the same Liberal shop-keeping class which returned 
Butler at the last election, and by the force of the higher 
artisans, shipbuilders, and the like, " Demos," as Fowle 
called it, all below the upper artisan went en masse for 
Beales. Coope's 7000 are, to me, a very real and 
astounding fact, — not less so than my discovery that 
had it been a contest between Coope and Beales, ^ of 
the Samuda voters would have gone to the Tory. The 
fact is the governance of England is still in the same 
shop-keeping hands, and their sympathies are just where 
they were, with a quiet Liberalism which changes as 
little as. possible. In other words, I expect nothing 
from the next Parliament. 



2o6 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

But it is an immense pleasure to think that one M.P. 
at least is not an elderly soap-boiler, and that if not a 
pessimist as I am you are at any rate not a middle-class 
optimist. I suspect you are the one person in the bank 
who knows and can grapple with that ghost of Pauper- 
ism which is destined to trouble the slumbers of a 
Palmerstonian St. Stephen's. 

Good-bye, — I have written a cool letter, as I usually 
do when I am most delighted ; but you will understand 
it. — Ever yours, J. R. Green. 



To E. Denison 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
January 8, 1869. 

My dear Denison — ... I suppose you will 
hardly be back till the next session sees John Bright on 
the ministerial bench. It is possible that by that time 
my plans may be fixed: they are very hazy now, — 
a possible appointment at King's College looming in 
the distance. I have a great wish not to part cable 
altogether, — the hold the Church has over me, however 
slight, is a really healthy hold to a mind like mine. 
Moreover, I have still a great faith in the capacity of 
Ecclesia Anglicana to meet the national requirements of 
England in a way that no sectional action can do. And 
then, too, there is the feeling of honour which tells 
against quitting a ship when she looks as if she were 
getting into rough water. 

I can't tell you with what hope I look forward to 
your future, — not the immediate future, for men will 
go on eating and drinking till the flood comes, — but 
when the flood does come. And come it will. — Ever 
yours faithfully, my dear Denison, J. R. Green. 



II CLERICAL CAREER 207 



My Daughters on the Beach 

[These verses are undated. They refer to the daughters of Mr. 
Stopford Brooke, who was one of his oldest and warmest friends, and 
in whose house he was hospitably received in periods of illness and 
depression.] 

Pretty rosy legs 

Paddling in the waters ; 

Knees as smooth as eggs. 

Belonging to my daughters ! 

Sixty toes are twiddling 

In the sandy ocean. 

And six hearts are fiddling 

With a child's emotion. 

All of them are pushing. 

Shrimping nets before them : 

Thoughts of tea are rushing 

Like the sea-waves o'er them; 

Tea with shrimps and butter. 

Toast and water-cresses ; 

Hearts in such a flutter 

In their holland dresses. 

As ten feet come plashing 

Through the briny billow. 

See the crabs go splashing 

Each to seek its pillow. 

And the tiny fishes 

That would a-wooing stray 

'Gainst their mothers' wishes 

Much frightened, fly away. 

who would not sorrow; 
He would be a stock else ! 
When said Maud, *' To-morrow 

1 shall hunt for cockles." 
All the cockles shivered 
When they heard her talking; 
Closed their shells and quivered. 
And gave up their walking. 

Then each little maiden 
Trotted to her dwelling; 
All their baskets laden. 
All their bosoms swelling : 
Honor led the marching. 



2o8 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part ii 

Maud came proudly after; 
Evelyn walked, arching 
Her pretty head with laughter: 
Then was Olive snniling. 
Little girl so funny; 
Sybil most beguiling. 
Smiles as sweet as honey; 
Rosalind, whose pleasure 
Was to laugh for ever; 
In her baby leisure 
Touched with sorrow never. 

Home they came enraptured. 
And arranged the table; 
Boiled the shrimps they captured. 
Ate while they were able; 
Had a romp uproarious 
With the chairs and dishes; 
Stripped and took a glorious 
Bath like little fishes ; 
And at last quite cosy 
Laid upon the pillow. 
All their cheeks so rosy — 
Dreaming of the billow 
And the ripple argent. 
Where the foam had motion. 
On the sandy margent 
'Twixt the rocks and ocean. 
And of water playing 
Round their ancles tiny ; 
And of next day slaying 
Shrimps and urchins spiny ; 
Crabs and cockles hiding 
In the rippled ridges. 
And sea-flowers abiding 
Underneath rock edges. 
So they lay a-dreaming 
Pleasures without number; 
Till the day-light streaming 
Roused them from their slumber. 
To the be ich and waters 
They again descended ; 
For my six young daughters. 
Thus my lay is ended. 



PART III 



THE "SHORT HISTORY 



The following series of letters belongs to the period 

(1869-1874) during which Green wrote the Short 
History. When the strain of clerical duty was finally- 
taken off, he intended to devote himself to the history 
of England under the Angevin Kings. He was, mean- 
while, to support himself chiefly by contributions to the 
Saturday Review. Towards the end of .1869, however, 
he had to consult Sir Andrew Clark. The diagnosis 
revealed a very serious condition of his lungs. Clark in 
fact told him a year later that it had been so serious that 
arrest of the disease seemed improbable. Green learnt 
enough to be aware that his life was precarious. He 
resolved to write a book, which if he lived would serve 
as an introduction to future work, and ensure that, if 
he should die, his labours should not have been en- 
tirely wasted. He was already known to Alexander 
Macmillan, who became a warm friend and who ap- 
preciated his talents. Macmillan now agreed to pay 
him j[^2S^ ^^^ ^^^ book to be written with further 
payment in case of its success. This enabled Green 
to set to work, and, though he still wrote occasional 
articles, the composition of the Short History became 
the main task of his life. He laboured with singular 
energy during the next five years. The state of his 
health frequently disabled him, and caused occasional 
p 209 



2IO LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

fits of depression. He was compelled to go abroad 
during the winter, and had therefore often to work at a 
distance from English libraries, and under the incon- 
veniences of hotel life. He had discouragements of a 
trying kind. He showed the work as it went on to 
various advisers, and their judgments were by no 
means uniformly favourable. " He never forgot," says 
Mrs. Green, "that during this time there were two 
friends, Mr. Stopford Brooke and his publisher, who 
were unvarying in their belief in his work, and hope- 
fulness of the result." It will be seen that Freeman, 
too, encouraged him at a critical point when an un- 
favourable estimate had caused misgivings. Freeman, 
however, shared the objection which seems to have been 
most generally felt. His friends thought, says Mr. 
Bryce, that he had contracted too much of the Saturday 
Review style. He was writing a series of brilliant 
articles rather than a continuous narrative. He was 
himself so far sensible of some truth in this that he can- 
celled a great deal that had been stereotyped and rewrote 
the whole, " re-creating, with his passionate facility, his 
whole style." He gave up the Saturday Review, though 
he could ill spare the loss, to master the task; and 
revised and corrected until his friends at last com- 
plained that he was too fastidious and induced him to 
bring out the book. While admitting, however, that 
there was some ground for their criticism, he could not 
have accepted it unreservedly without abandoning his 
whole conception of history. His critics had in their 
minds a manual for schools. Such a book, they thought, 
should adhere closely to chronological order; give direct 
statements of dates and events ; and hold by the con- 
ventional landmarks, the battles and personal incidents 
which determine the lines of an ordinary history. They 
complained, therefore, that Green often omitted such 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 211 

facts or alluded to them indirectly ; that the student 
would be at a loss in an arrangement which occasionally 
disregarded the division by reigns ; and in short, as 
Freeman put it, that the book would be useful to those 
who had already considerable knowledge of history, but 
would not provide the ignorant with elementary know- 
ledge. Green was opposed to this view on principle. 
It was his aim, as he said in his preface, to pass briefly 
over many of the incidents which constitute the main 
staple of the old histories, the court intrigues, wars, and 
diplomacies, and to bring out "the incidents of consti- 
tutional, intellectual, and social advance, in which we 
read the history of the nation itself" He strove never 
to sink — as he said in a phrase which has become popular 
— into a mere " drum and trumpet history." This aim 
involved a new grouping of his materials. The strong 
sense of literary form, which is conspicuous in all his 
work, led him to bring together topics which, if treated 
at all, are broken up and become discontinuous on the 
old system. He wished to bring out the unity and 
continuity of great religious or literary movements or 
of economic changes, such as the growth of town life, 
in which the leading moments are not defined by the 
accession of kings or the event of battles. The narra- 
tive had, to a great extent, to be reorganised and the 
stress laid upon a different series of events. It was im- 
possible, therefore, that Green should fully satisfy critics 
who desiderated a manual on the old model. Green 
had, in fact, written something quite different, and 
something which, as Freeman cordially admitted, was 
admirable from his own point of view. He had written, 
within a brief compass, nothing less than the first history 
of England which would enable his countrymen to gain 
a vivid and continuous perception of the great processes 
by which the nation had been built up, and which had 



212 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

been overlooked or incidentally noticed in the histories 
which adhere rigidly to sequences of outward political 
fact. Green's own view is given in some of the follow- 
ing letters. I have said so much because the funda- 
mental difference of view may explain why he had to 
meet discouraging criticism. He took it with admirable 
candour, and endeavoured to profit by it as far as it was 
consistent with his aims. The extraordinary courage 
and energy with which, in spite of ill-health, distracting 
circumstances, and doubtful approval from his friends, 
he managed to carry out the task which he had set him- 
self, will best appear from the letters. 

The success was remarkable enough in itself. It 
would be difficult to mention any case in which an 
achievement at all comparable has been accomplished in 
the teeth of such serious obstacles. The letters suggest 
other points, which may be made clearer by a few 
comments. 

Green's first visit to the continent was in 1867, 
when he accompanied Freeman on a tour to Normandy. 
In 1868 they paid a visit to Anjou. " It was a wonder- 
ful process," says Freeman, "to go through such places 
with such a man, each of us studying for his own ends, 
ends which had so much in common." In the autumn 
of 1869 he went with the Stopford Brookes through 
Switzerland, and had his first sight of Italy, coming 
back, he says, with a new sense of the beauty of the 
world. In 1870 he made his first journey in search of 
health, and spent the winter mainly at San Remo. 
The winter of 1871-72 was again spent at San Remo, 
Freeman accompanying him on the outward journey 
through Germany to Venice and Ravenna. In 1872 he 
joined the Stopford Brookes at Florence, and thence went 
by Rome and Naples to Capri, where he passed the 
winter, visiting Rome again on his return. The last 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 213 

winter before the completion of his book (1873—74) was 
spent in London. He was hving at 5 Beaumont 
Street, Marylebone, where he took lodgings after 
leaving Stepney. 

Green had one disqualification as a traveller. He 
had no facihty in learning languages. Although his 
memory for facts and for the substance of books 
was remarkably strong, his verbal memory was weak. 
This was a hindrance to him in his classical studies, 
and probably accounts for this linguistic weakness. He 
could, of course, read French, but never learnt to speak 
it fluently. Of German, according to Mr. Bryce, he was 
quite ignorant, though he had certainly read some 
Goethe at college. He learnt Italian at San Remo in 
order to read Dante, but could only talk it sufficiently 
for hotel purposes. Yet his joy in taking in fresh 
impressions enabled him to turn every journey to the 
fullest account. Fellow-travellers describe him as the 
most delightful of companions. He was interested in 
the physical characteristics of the country — in the people, 
in the politics, and in the strangers whom he met. In 
the railway carriage he was always springing from one 
side to the other to catch new aspects of the country. 
He bought all the newspapers, of which he was an 
insatiable reader to the last. He could " squeeze all 
the juice out of a paper," says Mr. Bryce, "in a few 
minutes." He was, at the same time, reading a book 
and keeping up a lively conversation with his friends. 
He had, at all times, a singular power of concentrating 
his attention so as to read a book by pages at a glance. 
Mr. Loftie tells how he looked casually at an essay 
while keeping up a lively conversation with some ladies, 
and afterwards showed that he had absorbed its con- 
tents, and formed an opinion upon its merits. This 
amazing intellectual agility enabled him, it seems, like 



214 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

a juggler, to keep up several balls in the air at once. 
He was constantly imbibing and communicating all the 
complex impressions of a journey. Many indications of 
this faculty will appear in these letters. They illustrate, 
in particular, one characteristic — his intense interest in 
the history of towns. Mr. Bryce tells how he reached 
the town of Troyes early one morning with his friends. 
He explored it, "darting hither and thither through 
the streets, like a dog following a scent ! " In two 
hours the work was done. In the afternoon the party 
started for Bale, reached it late, and went to bed. 
Green brought down to breakfast next morning an 
article upon Troyes, describing its characteristics, and 
tracing its connection with the Counts of Champagne 
during some centuries. He then walked with his friends 
through Bale ; and Green, on the spur of the moment, 
gave them an equally vivid history of the town, though 
he was seeing both places for the first time, and had 
made no special preparation. "He could apparently 
have done the same for any other town in France or 
the Rhineland." Another anecdote tells how he was 
called upon, quite unexpectedly, to speak at an archaeo- 
logical meeting of the history of some English town 
(Bury St. Edmunds, I believe). He rose at once, and 
delivered an address of more than an hour, giving a 
brilliant account in perfect form of the history of the 
town and its relations to the abbots or barons. 

Freeman was especially impressed by Green's powers 
in this direction during their Italian tour. " It was," 
he says, " delightful to be with him ; it was delightful 
to listen and learn from him. ... It is needless to say 
what were Green's primary objects in Italy. Here was 
municipality on its grandest scale. Never was he so 
thoroughly at home as in the stately town-house of an 
Italian city. One of the great days of one's life was 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 215 

the day when I first went to Ravenna with such a com- 
panion. . . . And well I remember how we stood, side 
by side, before the tomb of Henry VII. in the Holy 
Field of Pisa." Freeman, in his quaint fashion, ever 
afterwards spoke of the town-houses as " Johnny 
Houses," to commemorate Green's revelation of their 
interest. " And now, O Johnny," he says, in a letter 
ten years afterwards, " as I have been rambling over 
endless cities, telling the towers thereof, let me once 
more thank you for having first taught me to do a 
town as something having a being of itself, apart from 
the churches, castles, etc., within it. I have given you 
thanksgiving in a preface, but you deserve another 
every time I go over such a place." 

Freeman remarks that Green's visits to Italy had a 
marked effect upon him. They widened his concep- 
tions of history. His dislike to the Oxford system 
had led him to undervalue the importance of the histories 
of classical Greece and Italy in their bearing upon more 
recent periods. The sojourn in Italy removed this 
limitation. On the other hand. Freeman complains 
that his enthusiasm carried him too far. He learnt 
to " despise English things and Teutonic things in 
general ; " and Freeman, therefore, looked upon him 
as a wanderer from the Teutonic fold. " His nature 
was, in fact," says Freeman, " rather Southern than 
Teutonic," and he found the social as well as the 
physical atmosphere of Italy more congenial than his 
own. Green's letters indicate his own view of this 
change of feeling, which to Freeman appeared to be 
a desertion. It may be doubted how far Green's love 
of Italy was due to the want of a Teutonic element in 
his nature. So many Englishmen of genius from the 
days of Chaucer to those of Browning have been pro- 
foundly impressed by Italian travel, that sensibility to 



2i6 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

such influences might be claimed as a specially English 
characteristic. In any case, the impression made upon 
Green was undoubtedly as profound and enduring as it 
was natural. An intense delight in the beautiful was 
one of his most conspicuous qualities. During his life 
in the East End of London he had felt the ugliness of 
the long rows of monotonous houses as a perpetual 
burthen upon his spirits. With all his appreciation of 
Puritan virtues, he was keenly awake to the ugly out- 
side of Puritanism, and his sympathy with religious 
instincts did not extend to the directly ascetic forms of 
belief. The artistic treasures in Italian picture-galleries 
and churches appealed to him as well as the historic 
interest of municipal buildings. He had not, indeed, 
any technical knowledge of art. He loved pictures as 
the true man of letters loves them, not for the skill 
displayed, but for the emotions which they excite. It 
was " the human element," says Mr. Bryce, " that 
fascinated him." His keen sense of humour was often 
tickled by the vagaries of the " aesthetical " painter and 
the conventional raptures of the common tourist ; but 
he could speak of painting and sculpture with " extraor- 
dinary power " and genuine enthusiasm. His keen 
eye for the physical features of a country would seem to 
imply an equally genuine love of nature. Mr. Bryce, 
indeed, thinks that he was comparatively without the 
" passion for pure nature unsullied by the presence of 
man " — for the objects, that is, in which the " mountain 
lover " delights. But then Mr. Bryce is presumably 
infected by the heresies of the Alpine Club, as becomes 
its most distinguished president. Green, like Freeman, 
looked askance at that monomania, and was not quali- 
fied for its special modes of nature-worship. That he 
could enjoy the beauties of Italian scenery, and even 
of mountains at a proper distance, will be sufficiently 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 217 

evident from these letters. " Though he was not a 
botanist," says Mr. Humphry Ward, " I never heard 
any one speak with more genuine and poetical enthusi- 
asm of the flowers of the Riviera." What seems to be 
clear is that, in his mind, nature was not " sullied" by the 
presence of man ; but, on the contrary, most interest- 
ing when it appeared as the environment of some human 
society, the background which made some fragment of 
history stand out more clearly and intelligibly. It was 
scarcely possible for him to look at any scene which did 
not call up memories of the historical events with which 
it had been associated. His quick sympathy enabled 
him, in spite of the difficulties of communication, to 
associate himself with the pleasures and sorrows of the 
living inhabitants ; and it will be seen how thoroughly 
he made himself at home with the fishers at Capri, 
and was amused and interested by their characteristic 
manners and customs. 

Green's wrestle with the difficulties of the Short 
History did not prevent him from forming a variety 
of other literary projects to which some references will 
be found in the following letters. He discussed many 
of them with his friend Macmillan, at whose house he 
frequently stayed, talking till late hours over these and 
other subjects. One plan was for a series of lives of 
great men, anticipating a system which has since become 
popular. The scheme for a Historical Review \\2i% been 
already mentioned (letter to Freeman of January 23, 
1867). It was frequently discussed by Green with 
Freeman, Mr. Bryce, and Professor Ward, but could 
never be got into shape. Green was invited to be 
editor, but ultimately declined for reasons which will 
appear from his letters. It was not started until 
1886. A third scheme was devised in co-operation 
with Macmillan. Green became editor of a series of 



21 8 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

historical and literary " Primers." This was not started 
until the publication of the Short History had made 
Green famous. A primer on Rome by Creighton, the 
late Bishop of London, appeared in 1875 '•> ^^^ among 
later contributors upon various topics were Gladstone, 
Sir R. Jebb, Professor Dowden, Mr. Stopford Brooke, 
Miss Charlotte M. Yonge, Professor Mahaffy, and Dr. 
Peile. " I can assure you," wrote his friendly publisher 
to him in 1877, "that hardly any enterprise we have 
ever been engaged in has been more satisfactory to me 
personally, and not less to other members of the firm, 
than your Primers. Believe me, my dear Green, that 
you are loved, and honoured, and trusted among us all 
in a very high degree, and we count all that you do 
with and for us as among our most precious work." 
I may here mention that Green first proposed the for- 
mation of an Oxford Historical Society, and drew 
up a paper of suggestions for it in 188 1. It was not 
started till 1884. For the present, however, the 
Short History — "Little Book" or "Shorts," as he 
calls it — represents Green's main occupation, though 
the letters will show how the extraordinary vivacity 
and versatility of his intellect prevented even that 
occupation from absorbing his whole energies. 

To Miss von Glehn 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
January 13, 1869. 

My dear Olga — I appeal to you as being not 
merely the wisest, best, and most thoughtful of human 
beings, but also as the most charitable, benevolent, and 
compassionate, to tell me without prevarication or 
evasion or subterfuge or cunning craftiness of speech, 
but plainly, straightforwardly, simply, and intelligibly. 

What has become of my Little Black Bag ? 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 219 

In that bag — I confide the sacred secret to your 
honour — in that bag — I repeat — but here again I 
appeal to that nobler and diviner sense of sympathy 
which warms your buzzum — in that bag was (or were, 
but I scorn grammar with 2i friend, yes, 3. friend) 

one small and much worn 

pair of 

Boots! 

Olga ! my feelings are too much for me — still, one 
word ! That Bag and Them boots I left in your 
ancestral hall when hurried away by a daemon in 
human form. Was it his purpose to abstract them ? 
I ask in agony, has he swallowed my Boots ? Oh, 
Olga, I weep ; but farewell, one long, last, laster, 
longer, longest, lastest Fare-better, Fare-best. — Your 
ever more and ever morer, J. R. Green. 



To E. A. Freeman 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
January 13, 1869. 

[Percy Smythe, 8th Viscount Strangford (1826- 
1869), the eminent philologist and orientalist, died on 
January 9, 1869. He was a frequent contributor to 
the Saturday Review and Pall Mall Gazette^ but 
published no book during his life. His Selected 
tVritingSy edited by Lady Strangford, appeared in 
1869.] 

My dear Freeman — I am sure you have felt very 
deeply poor Lord Strangford's sudden death. How 
inadequate what he has left behind him seems to what 
was in him ! I felt it in some ways like a call, " the 
night Cometh " — I wonder whether I shall die as he 
has died, and leave merely a name among a few ? 

Sometimes I think I have been playing at mere 
Papistry, and that my work and voluntary burial down 



11Q LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

here has been a mere notion of making up for my 
self-indulgence and revolt. Who knows ? I can't 
read my own book — sometimes the pages seem all 
black, and then my better knowledge rises up and 
says " No, not all" and then I don't know which are 
black and which are white. And indeed there are 
moments when black and white seem one. 

1 am going to run down on Friday to Cox but 
must be back by Saturday even, so we can't talk much 
— which may be as well, as such " talk of the lips 
tendeth to penury " by the simple process of forcing 
one to give up one's living and the like. 

Here is a good story for all my moans. I praught 
at the Savoy on Sunday morn, and thundered against 
the imbecility of Poor Law administrators. When I 
came out the Chaplain congratulated me on my pluck, 
" the attentive gentleman three seats in front of you 
was Goschen, the President of the Poor Law Board." 
Fancy my playing Elijah to such an Ahab ! 

I have been musing much over your excursus on the 
Earldoms. I think I see pretty clearly that the old 
provinces were rigidly preserved in all that seeming 
chaos ; and that those blessed Godwiningas were not 
merely throwing England into hotch-pot as I thought 
at one time. For instance that " Middle Anglia " 
which is my pet province just now seems from early 
days to have had a connection with Northumbria, in 
hegecestriensi et Snotingensi quorum Christianitas ad 
archiepiscopum Eboracensem spectat^ says Florence i. 
278 ; hence its broken relations with Siward and his 
house as an Earldom. So too that awful puzzle, 
Swegen's Earldom with Oxford in it, looks amazingly 
like a restoration of what 1 take to have been the 
old Wessex north of Thames of which Dorchester 
was the seat, and which must have occupied pretty 
much that area before Wulfhere's conquests. 

What I am certain of is that up to the Conquest 
these provincial divisions and provincial feelings played 
a far more important part than you historians have 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 221 

given them credit for, I may be too Mercian, but all 
of you cut the political history of the Mercian Supremacy 
from Penda's day to the sudden rise of Ecgbert — some 
century and three-quarters. Now I believe that it is 
just in the political and ecclesiastical forms which Eng- 
land took then, that one can find out all such queer 
puzzles as those Mercian Earls you rave against more 
West-Saxon-ico. The difference between South-Anglia 
— that is Old Wessex north of Thames, prigged by 
Wulfhere, and got back by Alfred — and Middle 
Anglia + Mercia -I- E. Anglia — is the secret of the 
Treaty of Wedmore, and its seemingly arbitrary line. 
Of all which see more in a grand excursus on " Mercia, 
the Mercian Kingdoms, and the Mercian Earls," which 
will probably never be written. — Yours ever, dear 
Freeman, J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
January 29, 1869. 

[Refers to proof of Freeman's account of the coro- 
nation of Harold on January 6, and to the victories of 
Wulfhere, King of Mercia, over the West Saxons.] 

My dear Freeman — I am glad you are at Morte- 
mer. Your Epiphany proof reached me, as you meant 
it, at Cox's. I greatly enjoyed my visit there, what 
a pleasant place he has, and what a delightful — sur- 
prise shall I call it — in that little chapel. I suppose 
it is the strength of the old Adam in one which makes 
one connect somehow the saying of prayers with the 
saying of creeds. We talked much of things not in the 
Norman conquest, but I won't talk of them now while 
I have the ticket porter's cry of Battle in my ears and 
the roll of William's sea. For I have just come back 
from Hastings, and have done pilgrimage to Anderida. 
What a wonderful place that Pevensey is — one great 
circuit of Roman wall and the two bastions of the 
Decuman Gate through which ^Ua and William must 



222 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

have passed. I lay there in the winter sunshine, and 
drome much of that long inroll of wave after wave of 
conquest and settlement that saw its beginning and end 
in those broken walls. Few places have struck me so 
much — I wonder why it is that p /aces bring one this 
peculiar pleasure ? Do you remember our tramps over 
Angers or our walking about Le Mans, and telling 
the towers thereof? Hastings too with its old town 
squeezed in between the two hills and round the two 
churches has its interest as a Cinque Port. I have 
been dipping into the history of that said federation — 
imagine their having the right to send a bailiff to Yar- 
mouth during the herring fishing, who displaced all the 
town officers and held pleas and what not. Do you 
know any other instance in England of this Berne-like 
usage ? 

I am forgetting the proof of the Epiphany-Corona- 
tion, of the st^k of which I wanted to say somewhat. 
Oddly enough, its tone reminded me of my sermons 
when I was a deacon, it wanted measure and variety. 
I was thinking about style the other day, and it seemed 
to me that David's notion of a procession expressed 
my notion of style, " the singers go before, the min- 
strels follow after, in the midst are the damsels playing 
on the timbrels." Now you give us the singers, capi- 
tal " anthems " they sing, but there is a certain want of 
the plain prose of the minstrels, and I haven't caught 
a note of the timbrels. No doubt you will say that 
I give the world quite enough of the damsels my- 
self! But seriously I often wish in the middle of a 
grand page that you would write as you talk, with all 
the variety and impulsiveness and humour of your 
conversation. " Strenuus " is a good title for a king, 
but hardly so excellent for a writer. Perhaps it is a 
slight remnant of the " dignity of history " feeling 
that makes us all go a little a-tiptoe ! At any rate 
that particular proof did seem to me very rhetorical 
and monotonous in style, and to want a good deal of 
cutting down. 



Ill 



THE "SHORT HISTORY" 223 

As to the facts, my mind is so disturbed by the 
thought that before Wulf here made me what I am I was 
a West Saxon that I fear to commit either of my selves 
and will give no verdict till I look them up for the 
close of my Httle volume. I think it Hkely I may be 
free in a month or so to set about it. MacmiUan is 
willing enough. Good-bye.— Ever yours, dear Freeman, 
^ ^ J. R. Green. 

I saw Venables yesterday — he is our new Bishop's 
Examining Chaplain. 

To E. A. Freeman 

St. Philip's, Stepney 
(1869). 

[Archbishop Longley, to whom Dr. Stubbs had been 
librarian, died on October 27, 1868, and was succeeded 
by Tait.] 

My dear Freeman — Thanks for your testimonial 

Stanley has written, so has Stubbs ; while that dear 

old Hardy, the only other person I asked, has written 
me the j oiliest letter in the world, adding to the ex- 
pression of his own good wishes his assurance of the 
good wishes of— Lord Romilly ! which things are too 
wonderful and excellent for me. 

Still there is little hope. Stubbs has written m the 
most lucid and convincing way (!) to explain this to me. 
It seems that he proposed to Longley after the row and 
reopening of the Library — to appoint two Hbrarians — 
the one to attend to the correspondence on hterary and 
ecclesiastical subjects without necessary attendance at 
the hbrary and without stipend — the other an under 
Librarian who should have the stipend and attend five 
days in the week at the Library to do the special Library 
work. The last was to be permanent — the first to 
change as before with the change of Primates. The 
Archbishop so far accepted this that he appointed 
Kershaw — a subordinate of Bradshaw's at Cambridge 



224 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

— to the second office ; the correspondence remained 
in Stubbs's hands but without any regular appointment. 

Now the stipend is no matter, and I have writ a 
second note to Tait asking for the senior Librarianship ; 
as I have no doubt he will confirm Kershaw in the 
Library itself. What I really want is the position^ a 
place which I can flee unto, and which may be my 
answer when folk ask "Who is he?" But I don't 
think Tait will see the fun of two Libs., and of course 
his offer of an unpaid office to me would give me a 
claim on him which he may not care to incur. 

The title of these transitional people is always a 
subtlety, like the raised pies of the Middle Ages. My 
notion was that till the person is elected, he is nothing 

— then he is Archbishop elect, his confirmation makes 
him Archbishop, his consecration only giving him the 
spiritual functions. But this may be Erastian, and we 
Erastians should be modest just now when we have 
put your candles out. 

I longed much to have been with you at Andreds- 
ceaster — your letter set me dreaming and I drome that 
you and iElla and Cissa were besieging Jesus College, 
and that I showed the Principal in the Chronicle the 
precedent for not leaving a Welshman alive. But lo ! 
I awoke; and like all pleasant things in this world, it 
was a Dream. 

How odd that our two Irreparable Pasts should be 
turning up together in the matrimonial way. I, too, 
have had a slight attack of memory, but it has been 
mitigated by a photograph, which showed that the chin 
of the LP. had become double in the hours of deser- 
tion. Neither my morals nor my constitution are equal 
to a double chin. — Ever yours, J. R. G. 



[Fragment, probably suggested by the visit to Battle.] 

I. WilHam's policy was to bring H. to an engage- 
ment — and that on the open coast where his cavalry 
could act. This was why he stayed at Hastings. Had 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 225 

he marched on London (i) he might have been 
attacked in the difficult Weald, or (2) have reached 
London to find it and the line of Thames barred 
against him, and Harold even in weak force able to 
hold it while receiving reinforcements. To draw H. 
to him Wm. waited, sent irritating messages, ravaged. 
Had he seized Battle, it could only have forced Harold 
to decline fighting. W.'s object was to get him to 
fight. 

2. Harold's best strategy to play Fabius. We 
don't know why he sought an engagement so early — 
it seems as if he purposed to avoid being joined by 
the Mercian Earls. He was certainly irritated by W.'s 
messages and ravage. But having resolved to bring W. 
to battle his policy was masterly. He took post near 
enough to force W. to concentrate his force, that is to 
cease foraging. W. had to starve or fight, and to fight 
he must attack H. on H.'s own ground. Hence he 
foils W.'s plan while seeming to fall in with it. He 
does accept the battle challenge, but he draws W. out 
of the plain into the broken Weald. 

3. The position — threefold, (i) On west highest 
ground, steep in front and rear. A beck beginning in 
two springs by the Abbey Gate on the north deepens 
and curves round this northern end, defending it on 
every side but that of the general plateau. (2) Further 
along plateau it dips gently, the slope becomes easy of 
attack ; but here the face of the hill is thrown forward 
in Malmesbury's " tumulus," the key of the position. 
(3) Still farther east the level rises again gently to the 
Abbey. Here stood Harold's standard. The slope in 
front of William and beneath the standard rises gently 
from the bottom almost to the brow of the plateau ; 
but the brow itself is abrupt and defensible. (4) On 
the extreme east the plateau forks and dips gently into 
the general level of the rolling country. Here too the 
bottom between the two armies ends in a rise of ground 
which links the two positions together. 

This (4th) eastern end is easiest of attack ; it might 



226 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

be turned. But to do this William, whose base of 
communications was at Hastings and must be firmly- 
held, must have weakened his force in front of Harold. 
This he could not do ; hence the fights on this side 
had Httle effect on the battle. (2) On the opposite 
flank the Bretons seem to have pushed round by the 
ravine, and to have got smashed there by Harold's 
right wing. Their defeat . . . 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
February 2, 1869. 

[Dr. W. A. Greenhill (18 14-1894), a well-known 
physician and antiquary, and one of Newman's friends 
at Oxford, was living at Hastings.] 

My dear Dax — ... Freeman's third volume 
is well on its way to the printers. I saw one proof 
which was far too rhetorical and diffuse ; but E.A.F. 
with all his greatness profits very little by criticism. I 
commended to him as the type of good style David's 
notion of a procession — " The singers go before, the 
minstrels follow after, in the midst are the damsels 
playing on the timbrels " — and told him he gave us 
plenty of " anthems " from the singers, but little of 
plain prose from the "minstrels," while I couldn't catch 
a note of the "timbrels." He and I did Battle together: 
we caught the Duke, but took him for a gardener. The 
"joggrafy" of the battle itself came out perfectly on 
the spot. Since then I have run down for a week to 
Dr. Greenhill at Hastings, and peeped at Pevensey 
with its great Anderida-circuit all complete. Few ruins 
have impressed me more. It was odd to stand in that 
Decuman Gateway, on the very ground which i^Ua 
and William must both have trodden, and to feel that 
that one spot had seen the beginning and end of the 
great series of conquests. In Greenhill's drawers too 
I found a lot of Stanley's letters from Rugby, with 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 227 

boyish vignettes of Arnold ! I have written to Grove 
and hope to get them into Macmillan. 

I think it likely that Easter may see me at King's 
College as Chaplain and Censor — not a very valuable 
post (^120, grub and rooms), but relieving me of the 
worry and work here, and giving me plenty of leisure 
for serious work. Moreover it will relieve me from 
a position which thought renders daily more imprac- 
ticable. It is possible too that Tait may make me 
Senior Librarian at Lambeth ; if so, my status is 
assured, and that terrible question, " Who is he 1 " 
receives an archiepiscopal reply. Anyhow, I have made 
up my mind to quit these eastern climes, and for a 
while to withdraw quietly from any conspicuous clerical 
position. King's College will be pleasant enough, if 
only because it is so very accessible to a certain friend 
who will find it at no great distance from the Geolog. 
Soc. rooms ! 

Good-bye, dear Dax ; give my kindest remembrances 
to your wife. I hope she is quite reconciled to the 
Cotton City. — And believe me, affectionately yours, 

J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

St. Philip's, Stepney 
{end of February '69). 

[The review of Longman's Edward III. appeared 
on February 20 and 27, 1869.] 

My dear Freeman — You are right about the 
librarianship. I am Tait's man, and did homage for 
my fee before the portraits of Warham yesterday. 
Thanks for kind words of yours which no doubt 
helped much this consummation. I leave St. Philip's 
at Easter, and woo poverty and freedom, a sort of 
combination of St. Francis and John of Leyden. As 
to my Jacquerie, I thought I had preached unto you 
beside the field of Senlac on my hatred of that Edward- 



228 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

time. I have pitched into it again this week a propos 
of Longman's Edward III. It has the singular merit 
of combining into one everything that I hate. Of 

Harold 

your ^^^.^-^--^"'''^''^-- --..^^^ trinity, Simon is the only 

Edward Simon 

one to my liking, and that partly because those cussed 
barons hacked him so at Evesham in your Edward's 
service. But he did love the " minor populus," the 
" Littlegregus " [?] as you will translate it, and didn't like 
Edward back up the Aldermen. I am like that De 
Rochefort who owned himself a Napoleonist, but begged 
leave to choose his Napoleon and chose the Second 
" because he levied no taxes and waged no wars." Of 
the three Edwards, the second is the man for my 
money. 

I send you Marie de France^ as I don't quite know 
which passage you want. 

Worit it be jolly to have no sermons to preach on 
Sundays 1 — Ever yours, J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
end of February 1 869. 

[This refers to an attack upon Freeman in the 
Athenaum. Hepworth Dixon resigned the editorship 
in August 1869. The Librarianship was unpaid.] 

My dear Freeman — Mary tarried in the kitchen 
owing to my servant's negligence, to whom I had 
committed her for postage. She goes to-day. The 
Censorship was the King's College appointment, which 
vanished before my " notorious broad-churchism." I 
get no pay nor rooms nor mutton-chops, but I get the 
Librarianship which gives me a " steak " in the Church 
still. Stubbs rejoices, but from his letter I discover 
for the first time that he half-expected the offer of the 
post to himself. The Archbishop I am sure didn't 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 229 

know he had the sHghtest notion of this or he would 
have given it to him at once. And as for me, am I a 
dog that I should do despite to Stubbs ? However, he 
is very pleased at his successor; and to me, of course, 
half the value of the post lies in its being a following 
of Stubbs. 

For in spite of your homilies, my dear Freeman, I 
am loyal to my masters, you being one. I knew 
nothing till last night about the vile conduct of Hep- 
worth Dixon, and have not yet seen the preceding 
attack of Surtees. Of course I am entirely in your 
hands — if you would wish me to own the papers I will 
do so at any risks. But in spite of Dixon's brutal note 
I think your reply conclusive enough. As you tell me 
now and then I do not " know how to review," but I 
pray all the Gods to let me try my hand at Hepworth's 
next volume. If I slay him not, let me die the death 
of a cow. As to my own "attack" it was (i) an 
acknowledgment of the prodigious difficulties you 
have had to contend with, and to contend with un- 
aided and alone ; (2) my opinion that without the 
special preliminary work such as I was advocating 
" even industry like Mr. Freeman's " could not cover 
the whole field through which he passes ; (3) that not 
Mr. Freeman hut "one and another of our historians " 
is driven by want of these aids to either leave out or 
not attach sufficient importance to certain influences 
which / consider important. Which of these three 
statements do you deny? — which is an "attack"? 
Don't you see that if you will write a great book and 
become even as Gibbon or Palgrave that you must 
expect to pay the penalty of greatness and to be quoted 
as a type, as an illustration of a school of history, or of 
a certain mode of conducting historical research ? As 
to the " old almanac," surely you remember the phrase 
— a famous one of Lord Plunkett's — not mine. 

Still had I known of that Athenaeum row I would 
have put some single line in which would have settled 
the question of my opinion of your book. As it was 



230 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

I avoided doing so, and even struck out in the proof 
the epithet " noble " before the words " account of the 
Conquest," because I imagined people would say "there 
is the S. R. buttering Freeman." Moreover, as to 
" moral and spiritual," don't be hard on a parson for 
using words of his craft. You see I have to tell people 
twice every seven days that the outer circumstances of 
life are as nothing in comparison with its " moral and 
spiritual " tone and character ; and I haven't yet found 
out why this, if true to-day, wasn't true under Harold 
or William. Nor do I quite understand why " talk " 
about " moral and spiritual " need be " vague " in their 
case, unless it is vague in ours. And if it be vague in 
ours, then why do I preach every Sunday ? And why does 
a great historian go to Bee to look for the "spiritual," 
and page after page a propos of poor Napoleon and 
Nebuchadnezzar pitch into us the " moral " ? 

Now I sulk not, neither do I whine, neither do I 
write a Sophistical (but rather a Socratic) defence. I 
believe that I served as whipping-boy for Hepworth 
Dixon, and that the stripes of them that rebuked thee 
have fallen upon me. So I shall in due time " pass it 
on " to the said Hepworth's account. By-the-bye the 
blessed Stubbs mourneth and languisheth because of 
my treatment of Longshanks. I sing aloud my pet 
verse of the Magnificat : " He hath put down the 
mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble 
and meek," and shake hands with the ghosts of the 
second Edward and the second Richard. I can forgive 
a King when he is deposed, and admire a Priest when 
he has resigned his living, as I did two days ago. — 
Ever yours faithfully, dear Master, J. R. Green. 

To W. B. Dawkins 

St. Philip's, Stepney, 
March 3, 1869. 

My dear old Dax — How immensely jolly of 
you to come and have a final chat before you go to 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 231 

Manchester and I leave St. Philip's. For I do leave 
at Easter. The Archbishop has appointed me Stubbs's 
successor at the Lambeth Library, and so I avail myself 
of it to steal away. I will tell you all about it and my 
reasons when you come. Anyhow, I have now got a 
settled literary status, and that without ostensibly quit- 
ting the line Ecclesiastical, do you see ? I can't tell 
you how glad I am, and if anything could have pleased 
me more than the offer of the post it would have been 
Tait's extreme kindness in the way he made it. We 
dine at 5.30 on Monday, and expect you. My sister's 
kind regards. — Ever yours, J. R. Green. 



To E. A. Freeman 

St. Philip's, Stepney. 

My dear Freeman — Dawkins gave me the most 
amusing account of your wrestlings with an antiquarian 
map-maker whom you had reduced to imbecility and 
tears. I proposed to him a new paragraph for his 
paper on the " Retreat of the Lion from Europe," 
thus, " A solitary specimen of this noble but ferocious 
animal is still to be found at Somerleaze. He has 
lately devoured a geographer ; " but he was ungrateful, 
and wouldn't put it in. 

I am going down to have a bit of dinner with 
Macmillan to talk over many things. He has some 
" Past and Present " maps — as I call them — on hand : 
whose end I could not at first make out, but which 
should come in useful. The idea is to have, as it 
were, both the modern map and Spruner under your 
eye at once^ modern map being the base or ground 
work, and Spruner laid upon it. Moreover, I think 
of writing a book on Lambeth Memorials or some 
such, which Macmillan is keen upon, and which will 
pay, pleasing likewise the Archbishop. It would take 
a very little time, and there is a certain amount of new 
stuff to work in. Likewise there may be some pretty 



232 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

pictures, such as Queen Bess bidding farewell to Mrs. 
Tait, with " Madam, I may not, and Mistress, I will 
not," and a sketch of Archbishop Cornwallis's Ball 
which never came off; which one might label " the 
Failure of the First Lambeth Conference." 

Oh, Freeman, my good fellow, how I wish you 
were here. I am in such tearing spirits at the prospect 
of Freedom. William Tell, ora pro nobis — Oh, 
Leonidas, Garibaldi, all illustrious Bards of Freedom, 
hoorah-te pro nobis ! — Good-bye, ever yours, 

J. R. Green. 

To W. B. Dawkins 

4. Beaumont Street, W., 
April 24, 1869. 

[Two papers on Gildas appeared in the Saturday 
RevieWy on April 24 and May 8, 1869. The " Rolls 
book " was upon Dunstan. Green ultimately handed 
over his materials to Stubbs, who used them for his 
Memorials of St. Dunstan.^ 

My dear Dax — ... I hardly know as yet 
whether I am on my head or my heels. It is so odd 
to be without a parish, without a parsonage, without a 
hundred bothers, interruptions, quarrels, questions to 
decide, engagements to recollect, lectures to compose, 
visits to make, sermons to plan, etc. etc. Then too 
the quiet of the Lambeth Library is like still waters 
after the noise of the East. I enjoy even the cleaner 
streets, and above all my morning's trot through the 
Parks. It is such a change too to get a chat when 
one likes, to be able to get a peep at good pictures, 
and to have one's mind free for the things one cares 
about. 

Well, I am writing like a Sybarite, and perhaps 
after eight years in the East End Sybaris has its 
charms, but I am getting into work as well. I began 
Sat. Rev. again this week with an elaborate paper on 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 233 

Gildas, which I should like you to look at if that 
naughty periodical comes your way. Then too I have 
begun my Rolls book, and done my papers for the 
Institute — in fact, I am getting into the literary rut 
pretty well. Good-bye, old boy. Remember me most 
kindly to your wife, and believe me 

— Very faithfully yours, J. R. Green. 



To E. A. Freeman. 

Lambeth Palace, S.E. 
\_August, 1869]. 

[The paper on St. Edmundsbury appeared in the 
Saturday Review for July 31, 1869.] 

Dear E. A. F. — . . . I am going on Monday 
with the Brookes to Switzerland for three weeks, then 
for three weeks to Venice, then I hope for a fortnight 
to Verona, Milan, Genoa, home. I was doubtful about 
going, as I hadn't a penny ; but I have writ much, and 
made ^45 this last fortnight, and I shall add ^10 to 
it this week so I can start in peace. . . . 

I am so glad you liked the Bury paper in S. R. I 
hadn't written anything for so long that I doubted 
much about it. But what a new field these burgher 
matters open up. I am going to study them in Italy 
a bit. I have very queer theories about the influence 
of the Italian communities on English town matters. 
The dates fit in so oddly. Without being fanciful, 
Italian influences seem to me to have played a far 
greater part in English history than we have yet made 
out. 

I writ to Cox, and Cox writ in pleasantest fashion 
to me. Hull is utterly out of the question ; if you 
had had as much preaching as I have, you would 
detest the merely metamorphic form of it which is 
called lecturing. If folk want to learn let them read 
and work — as for gaslights and small jokes and knit- 
ting needles in a Lecture-room, God forbid ! 



234 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Look in the Monasticon for Abbot Baldwin — I 
think what you want is in one of the Appendices. 

I know nothing about Luzern and those places or 
else I should be able to get much municipal stuff out 
of them. Is there a book in English or French that I 
could get ? Write and tell me by return so that I 
may get it before I go. Italian things I know about, 
and shall write to S. R. upon. — Ever yours, dear 
Freeman, J. R. Green. 



To E. A, Freeman 

New University Club, 

St. James's St., 
early November 1869. 

[Smith is (Sir) William Smith (18 13-1895), then 
editor of the ^arterly Review^ 

My dear E. a. F. — I came back last week, very 
tired, but with a new sense of the world's beauty, 
and — what will you say to me — a resolve to go to 
Italy every year till I die. The land has cast its 
spell on me as it did on Theodoric and the Ottos. 
But first to business. Bryce is eating his dinner down- 
stairs, so I don't speak ex-cathedra^ but I saw Mac- 
millan on my return and found him cooled about the 
Historic Review. The new organization of the North 
British^ with its wonderfully good summary of the 
historical literature of the quarter, and the appearance 
of the Academy^ certainly cut into our original plan. 
Moreover, thinking quietly over it in Switzerland, I 
doubted whether the sum Macmillan offers would 
really do — it would only give a modicum for papers, 
and nothing for editing. And again Bryce and Ward 
must come to much clearer terms as to the work they 
will undertake or I must hold back. It is far too 
big a job to start without clearly seeing one's way. 
So you will see one need not think just yet of papers. 
(2) I write to Smith to-day to tell him I have come 



iir THE "SHORT HISTORY" 235 

back too late to give him the review for Christmas 
I will send it in for March. To make up, I have got 
to do your little book for S. R., and both your im- 
mortal works for Pall Mall: so I shall be awfully 
tired of you without a quarterly article. As to " little 
book " an Oxford fellow writes in admiration : " It is 
a charming child's book, for children of twenty-four." 
Is this as true as it is witty ? 

I have been worriting myself these last days with 
those Welsh chaps and our early history, but I am 
getting more and more to think that one is lured into 
cloud-land by them. Of course Gildas is all right, and 
there-are nuggets in Nennius, but when one tries to work 
in the Welsh traditions or songs, somehow or other 
my "historical tact" begins to cry "Cave." I doubt 
even about Guest's attempts that way — his guesses 
about Arthur, his use of Llywarch Hen in "the Severn 
Valley " and the like. It is a great disappointment, 
for I have worked a good deal at them, especially at 
those lives of Dubricius and David, Kentigern, and so 
on, and I still see there is something to be made of 
them ; but it wants the lifetime of a man like Reeves 
before they can be really smelted down. I still cling 
to a few things — such as the religious dissensions of 
Britain, — the war between Gael and Cymry in Middle 
Wales, — and perhaps the Roman and anti-Roman 
parties of which Guest speaks. But I am less sure of 
these last than I used to be. And I am less sure of 
my Chronicle before EthelwulPs time. You know 
Stubbs has pronounced it an English translation of a 
Latin Compilation principally founded on Bede, and 
the Northern Chron. which followed him. So far I 
think I go with him, but it seems to me there were 
original annals of Wessex which were used as basis of 
the compilation ; and I have a sort of notion that 
H. Huntingdon had those annals in their original 
state with the " poetry " embedded in them before 
him, and simply translated them if they were English. 
Just look at him and note his purely "Wessex trans- 



236 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

actions," just as might be before Swithun or Alfred put 
in the Baeda bits and the Northern events. But then 
there's the sort of preface about " Kent and Sussex 
conquests," over which I muse, not exactly seeing my 
way. Your giving up " Port " (I don't mean in a 
total-abstinence way) was a great shock to my faith. 
If "Port" is legend, why am I to look on Cerdic as 
historical ? So long as I have Gildas well ; but after 
Aylesford and before Bede, I don't see quite as clearly 
as I did. And Guest is not quite as conclusive as he 
used to seem. 

But these be thoughts of darkness which shall not 
affect the " tone of the S. i?." Let anybody breathe 
a doubt about Horsa, that's all ! And meanwhile, it 
was so jolly to see Venice and stand before the Ducal 
Chapel and see the pretty marbles that " our Lord 
and Emperor Constantine " sent to S. Mark. It was so 
odd to cross the Empire, to start from and arrive at 
the two places where a western Caesar didn't come, 
unless like Barbarossa he came to be scolded. I saw in 
the Archives the original treaty between the Dukedom 
and Charles the Fat, but they talk like two strangers. 
Romanis ipsis Romaniores — "true Rowmans " these 
Venetians used to call themselves. It seems to me 
the one bit of the older Empire which remained 
politically, socially, religiously unchanged. Rawdon 
Browne was very civil. He knows lots, but about 
later times than what most interested me. Fancy 
taking up a great volume of the Agenda of the Council 
of Italia for 1301, and finding the whole series going 
calmly on to the French Revolution ! At Verona I 
made a charming hit — I guessed the real Roman town, 
Catullus and Theodoric's Verona, must be on the 
other side the Adige to where town and Duomo are 
now ; and there in a neglected Church I found the 
real old Episcopal Basilica with sixth century tombs in 
its crypt and in its apse " high over the people " 
the real bishop's chair of marble — disused ever since 
Emperor Otto moved the Duomo over Adige to its 



in THE "SHORT HISTORY" 237 

present post. No bishop had sate in it since nine 
hundred and odd ! 

As for Switzerland, I got rid with Relliet's help of 
all that mythical stuff, and just lay in the pass beneath 
the cHffs of Unterwalden looking out on Schwytz and 
UrI and the bay of the Three Cantons. Never such a 
day again! — Ever yours, J. R. G. 



To E. A. Freeman 

New University Club, 

St. James's Street 

(1869). 

[Freeman's Old English History for Children appeared 
in 1869.] 

My dear Freeman — I owe you some hours of 
enjoyment, for I have just been reading through the 
sheets of your Child's-Book up to the coming of the 
Danes. I can't tell you how much I admire it ; it is 
certain to be popular, and to do an immense deal of 
good. I hardly know which I hke best — its chat and 
ease or the Biblical quaintness of the stories you tell. 
The poorest chapter I have got to as yet is that on the 
EngHsh Conquest. I still demur (of course) to the 
Bretwaldas ; and equally of course to your summing 
up the Anglian centuries of Supremacy into a period of 
West-Saxon rise. But these be nought compared with 
the boldness of your introduction of your children 
into the whole criticism of authorities, etc. This consti- 
tutes the real originality and value of the book. I 
should never have dreamt of doing it; but done as it 
is it is a simple triumph. We can never go back in 
children's books to the old Ipse dixi. 

I spent Sunday with Macmillan and G. W. Clark, 
who told one pretty story of Neate and Dizzy. Long 
after Free Trade had come in Neate remained un- 
convinced, and at last wrote a pamphlet advocating a 
restoration of Protection, and got a friend to submit it 



238 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

to Disraeli. " Tell him," replied D., " that Protection 
Is dead." "But Mr. Neate," replied the friend, "be- 
lieves in its Resurrection." "Then tell him," Dizzy- 
whispered, "tell him Protection is not only dead but 
damned." 

Bryce is keeping our review-programme in the vain 
hope of finding another word for " scientific," which he 
hateth ; also that he may explain more at large that we 
are not going to employ the French correspondent of 
the Daily Telegraph to do our summaries of foreign 
matters. Let us trust he may make it clear. What 
a bright, jolly fellow he is when one comes to know 
him ! 

Good-bye. In all Curtiusy and Conscience, — Yours 
very truly, J. R. G. 

To E. A. Freeman 

{Deer. 0/1869.) 

[The "Venice and Torcello" appeared in the Satur- 
day Review on December 11, 1869.] 

My dear Freeman — I am afraid I must again dis- 
appoint you (and still more myself) in the matter of 
my Christmas visit. I have just been stethoscoped by 
Dr. Andrew Clark, and he has discovered that there is 
some serious damage to my right lung which will 
require a good deal of trouble to fight down, if it is to 
be fought down at all. At any rate he wishes me to 
remain quietly under his charge for the next month, 
till he can judge what system of treatment to adopt. 

Please keep this to yourself. I don't want to set up 
for an invalid ; though I am afraid that if all went for 
the best I must be content to live that sort of life for 
a long time. I am not so scared as some people might 
be ; my only regret is that I have not done more in 
my life, if it is to be a short one. But at present there 
is very good hope, I believe, that the mischief can be 
really met. 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 239 

It is a sad disappointment not to see you and chat 
with you. But you will manage — as you always do 
manage — to write to me now and then ; your letters 
are always so great a pleasure to me. After all I 
yielded to the Academicians and reviewed Charley 
Pearson, but in such wise that they have not dared to 
put it in. And yet I was very civil. I hope you liked 
my " Venice and Torcello " last Saturday. 1 forgot to 
tell you how I enjoyed your " Kenfig " ; those "peasant 
boroughs " are an odd English feature of municipal life 
of which I know nothing. Is there any instance of a 
purely " Bishop's borough " here save Wells ? 

Good-bye. Write and tell me all your plans for 
Christmas diversions. Don't you dance yourself at 
the Christmas ball ? Good-bye. — Ever yours, dear 
Freeman, J. R. Green. 



To E. A. Freeman 

I Manchester Square, W. 
{end of 1869). 

[This is the first mention of the Short History^ 

My dear Freeman — Frank Palgrave has just been 
down at Hatfield, Lord Salisbury's place, and has 
brought back some charming " Notes on Froude." 
In the library are ten presses full of the Burghley 
papers, whereof two are shown to the " casual visitor " 
by the housekeeper. Anthony looked a little into the 
two but never discovered the existence of the other 
eight ! Lady S. says he is " the most indolent man " 
she ever knew. Shall we call him " Indolence in a 
dozen volumes " ? 

Note in vol. xii, a passage about Sixtus V. " curs- 
ing and swearing " at his servants ; and then look at 
the Spanish beneath with its simple malas palabras. 
Does F. never scold a servant without " cursing and 
swearing " ? 

My general health is far better ; thanks above all 



240 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

to the incessant care and kindness of the Brookes, who 
have insisted on my stopping here with them — and my 
lung is " certainly no worse, probably a shade better,'* 
says Clark. I daresay that with patience and care I 
shall be patched up ; but " patience and care " ! ! Life 
has never been very amusing, and now it will be grayer 
and duller than ever. 

I am going to drop S. R. writing, as " too exciting " 
and so on, and only drop in a paper now and then 
when the spirit moves. So to live, and also partly that 
I may set down a few notions which I have conceived 
concerning history, I have offered Macmillan to write 
a Short History of the English People, 600 pp. octavo, 
which might serve as an introduction to better things 
if I lived, and might stand for some work done if I 
didn't. He has taken it, giving me £2S^ down and 
;^ioo if 2000 copies sell in six months after publi- 
cation. 

He seems delighted with the sale of your little book 
— 1200 gone already. You have got fairly into port 
at last, my dear E. A. F., after all your long brave 
battle with adverse seas. Why not repubhsh the best 
book you ever did in some ways — your History of the 
Saracens — now when the tide is in ? 

Write to me soon — letters are so precious now. All 
good wishes for the coming year. — Ever yours, dear 
Freeman, J. R. Green. 

To Miss L. von Glehn {Mrs. Cr eight on) 

Thanks, dear Louise, for the paper of notes. . . . 
[My notes] are simply hints for good English not got 
at in a day. Simplicity is half of it, I think, and in 
simplicity I am as far to seek as anybody. But the 
true way to write well is to write constantly, — ease of 
style can only come by habit ; and grace of style can 
only come of ease. . . . Above all, don't let any idle 
fun of mine make you think me careless about your 
work. I am quite certain that earnestness of aim and 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 241 

energy of spirit lie at the root of right womanhood as 
of right manhood. If I laugh, — it is only by way of 
protest against the occasional exaggeration even of 
earnestness. Grace of temper, beauty of tone, are of 
the essence of life as they are of the essence of style, — 
and there is sometimes more to be learnt out of books 
than in books. But perhaps these thoughts are thoughts 
that come later than twenty, and I am exacting in ask- 
ing for a balance and moderation, a just appreciation of 
the true conditions of life, which only time and a bitter 
experience can give. It is sorrow that gives the capac- 
ity for laughter, I think ; it is the darkness and the 
brokenness and the disappointment of life that enable 
one to look on coolly and with a smile even when one 
is most in earnest. Neither toil nor the end of toil in 
oneself or in the world is all vanity, — in spite of the 
preacher, — but there is enough vanity in both to make 
one sit loose to them. 

What seems to grow fairer to me as life goes by is 
the love and peace and tenderness of it ; not its wit and 
cleverness and grandeur of knowledge, grand as know- 
ledge is, but just the laughter of little children and the 
friendship of friends and the cosy talk by the fireside 
and the sight of flowers and the sound of music. . . . 
— Believe me, yours, J. R. G. 



To Miss L. von Glehn {Mrs. Cr eight on) 

(1869.) 

My dear Louise — ... I am coming back on 
Tuesday morning all the better and fresher for my run 
out. With all its faults of idleness and littleness there 
is a charm about Oxford which tells on one, a certain 
freshness and independence (" it has never given itself 
over to the Philistines," as Mat. Arnold says), and be- 
sides a certain geniality of life such as one doesn't find 
elsewhere. Perhaps its very blunders — and one meets a 
blunder at every step if one regards it as a great educa- 



242 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

tional institution — save it at any rate from falling into 
the mere commonplace of the Daily Telegraph. The 
real peril of our days is not that of being wrong, but of 
being right on wrong grounds ; in a liberalism which is 
a mere matter of association and sentiment, and not of 
any consistent view of man in his relation to society ; 
the Liberalism of the daily papers, I mean, and of nine- 
tenths of their readers ; a LiberaHsm which enables the 
Times to plead this morning for despotic government in 
Greece, or Froude to defend the rack. And with all its 
oddities [Oxford] seems to give a wide toleration and 
charity to the social intercourse of thinkers ; Comtist 
and Romaniser laugh together over High Table and are 
driven by the logic of fact from the shallow device of 
avoiding one another as " fools " or " madmen." . . . 

J. R. Green. 



To E. A. Freeman 

Vicarage, Minster-in-Thanet, 
February 3, 1870. 

[A Devonshire man, in the Fall Mall Gazette of 
January 18, had challenged a statement of Huxley's 
that " Devonshire men were as little Anglo-Saxon as 
Northumbrians were Welsh." Huxley had quoted 
Freeman in his reply, and Freeman now supported 
Huxley. See Huxley s Life, i. 325.] 

My dear Freeman — Where am I to begin ? — I am 
overwhelmed with your productiveness. I read my 
hostess here the " Windham " letter, and we were both 
charmed with it. What capital speaking his must have 
been ! Froude No. 1 is an improvement on No. i, 
but why don't you hit him in the big things and not in 
the little ? The big thing is that Anthony has written 
a history of England with England left out. As to the 
" Huxley," you have been led away by reverence for 
Professors who reverence you, and you have not done 
justice to the Devon fellow. His point was that of — 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 243 

not so much the language which might be an after-im- 
portation, as the local names of Devon which couldn't, 
— and to my mind the point is an absolutely conclusive 
one, none the less so that Huxley said never a word 
about it. Nor do I go with you in the great weight 
you attach to the designation of the two counties, — it 
implies a difference, but what amount of difference must 
surely be ascertained from just the Devon-man's sort of 
arguments. Ah me, — when I exhorted you to be civil 
to Huxley I didn't mean you to go and slay innocent 
folk in order to reconcile him to his own execution. 

The news of Volume IV. is delightful, but why pound 
me with your virtue and your Alfredian " systems " 
when you know I am pinned down to three hours a day, 
" and no more," saith Clark the Despot. I am getting 
on with Little Book in the said three hours, much 
quickened by the sight of Ebbs-fleet and a walk every 
noontide to the upland just over the village, where 
Ethelbert met Augustine (sayeth the legend). Imagine 
Sitwell, with whom I am staying in the most charming 
of parsonages close by one of the noblest of churches, 
having Ebbs-fleet within his pastoral charge, — being as 
I told him to his great bewilderment " Spiritual Super- 
visor of the Origins of Church and State." I fancy 
he thought it was a Chinese title of some sort. 

Ebbs-fleet is a little Hft of higher ground on the 
brink of Minster Marsh, — a mere gravel bank with a 
few homesteads clustered on it, cut off from the sea 
nowadays by a meadow and a sea-wall. But the scene 
has a sort of wild vast beauty about it, — to the right 
the white curve of Ramsgate cliffs and the crescent 
of Pegwell Bay, — far away to the left over the levels of 
Minster Marsh, where the smoke-wreaths dispersing 
the thin brooding mist tell of Richborough and Sand- 
wich, the dim distant line of the cliffs of Dover and 
Deal. As one walks away from the sea, one follows the 
road which must have been Hengist's and Augustine's, 
along the little gravel-ridge north-eastward to the chalk 
uplands above Minster, and then there breaks on one a 



^44 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

noble view of the great belt of sea round Thanet, and 
far away over the marshes the tower of Canterbury. 

You dear old sceptic, — you'll say that's tall talk, — 
but it aint. 

And please write. I am a little doubtful about this 
place, — but I will wait before forming conclusions. If 
I can bear it, it will do me good. As it is, I am no 
worse, I think. 

Good-bye. — Yours ever, J. R. Green. 



To W. Boyd Dawkins 

Minster, Isle of Thanet, 
February 6, 1870. 

My dear Dawkins — I ran down here a week ago 
to give a jog to my lung which has as yet shown no 
tendency to reparation, though I hope all further 
damage is pretty well arrested. However I haven't 
done much good yet, — the weather has been so gloomy 
and the wind so keen. 

The S.'s have got a charming parsonage here, with a 
noble Norman church, most of it early twelfth century 
but with E. E. chancel and transepts, and at the west 
end a fragment of an older church of Cnut's day I 
fancy. All around the country is historic enough. 
Richborough and Reculver are only a few miles off, the 
chalk hill above us is where iEthelbert met Augustine, 
and at two miles' distance is Ebbs-fleet, where the first 
Englishmen landed, and the first missionaries. 

I wish you were here if only to coach me about 
Minster- Level, the great flat which stretches from 
Sandwich to the Downs westward of Thanet. In the 
Roman time it was a great sea-harbour, in Bede's time 
it was three-quarters of a mile across, ships seem to have 
gone through it as late as the thirteenth century. Now 
it is a great flat of marsh-meadows, with Stour running 
through it, a narrow river with a deep cut (artificial ?) 
bed. So great a change so dated is notable, and no 
doubt you have a good deal to say about it. Is Thanet 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 243 

rising still ? that is I suppose what the fall of the cliffs 
means, — and at what rate ? I should be glad of all 
you could tell me. 

In the quiet here Little Book gets on. It was 
horrible work to condense the English Conquest into 
five pages and the Conversion into six and yet be 
interesting, but I think I have managed pretty well. 
Do you " mind " having once told me about a new 
breed of cattle having been brought over by the English, 
— the big breed as distinct from the smaller British 
Galloways ? Do you still think so ? It is a very im- 
portant point indeed, and your conclusion, so far as I 
remember it, seemed a fair deduction from the facts. 
But let me know whether you still adhere to it. 

Let me hear from you ; letters cheer me very much 
now; and remember me to your wife and to Ward, and 
believe me yours ever, J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

Beaumont Street, W., 
March 5, 1870. 

My dear Dax — Your note followed me to town, 
for I had to run away from Minster, which suddenly 
became east-windy and has thrown me back a good bit. 
Indeed I took to spitting blood at Addington a week 
ago on my visit to the Archbishop, but it lasted a very 
wee time and has not returned since. Altogether I 
can't give a very satisfactory report of myself. I am 
certainly not so well as I was when you saw me ; and 
the long dull evenings in these dull lodgings when one 
is weary with work depress one sadly. 

The best, indeed the only good edition of the Leges 
WallidE is that published by Longmans for the Record 
Commissioners, Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales. 
Edited by Aneurin Owen in 1841, either i volume 
folio or 2 volumes octavo, price 3s. 6d. The passage 
from Howel Dda is certainly very important, and I 
ought to thank you very much for your note about the 



246 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

cattle-breeds. But I am anxious not to blunder. As I 
understand you, you distinguish between three varieties 
or breeds : i. the Urus ; 2. the short-horned or Gallo- 
way ; 3. the "white cattle with red ears." No. i is 
extinct before arrival of Romans. No. 2 is found 
occurring in the remains of the period of Roman 
occupation, — but never in Early English times. No. 
3 is never found in remains of Roman occupation 
period. Is this so, and if so is the breed No. 3 the 
progenitor of our present cattle ? And is your own 
feeling that the progenitors of our present cattle must 
have been brought over by the first English settlers ^ 
It is a very important matter. 

Tell Ward when you see him that after repeated 
conferences with Macmillan I find it impossible to get 
the Historical Review afloat. An editor is the thing 
wanted (he would pay one), and my unhappy illness 
stops the way. Still if there is any one whom Ward 
could suggest something might yet be done. 

I hear odd news from Oxford about Ruskin and his 
lectures. The last was attended by more than 1000 
people, and he electrified the Dons by teUing them that 
a chalk-stream did more for the education of the people 
than their prim " national school with its well-taught 
doctrine of Baptism and gabbled Catechism." Also 
" that God was in the poorest man's cottage, and that 
it was advisable He should be well housed." I think 
we were ten years too soon for the fun ! 

Freeman's little work is selling bravely, — 500 a 
month, Mac tells me, — altogether he has sold about 
3000 copies, and it goes on. Pike has been prodding 
him in Anthropological Review rather cleverly, and 
E. A. F. don't Hke it at all. 

Write soon and let me hear a heap about yourself 
and your goings out and comings in. Give my best 
remembrances to your wife, and believe me, — Ever 
yours, dear Dax, J. R. Green. 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 247 



To E. A. Freeman 

New University Club, 

St. James's St. 

[1870]. 

[Sir John Seeley succeeded Kingsley as Professor of 
Modern History at Cambridge, in the autumn of 
1869.] 

My dear Freeman — I have had a bad time of it 
lately, a cold which threw me back again and left 
me utterly weak and depressed. " You will have to 
begin- again," says my doctor. I can fancy a time 
coming when I shall be weary of beginning again. I 
sent you that iElfred's life to show you what your 
book is doing and how easily small boys take to it 
and its method. I should of course have written, 
but there are times when I cant write, as you of all 
people ought to know. Don't be angry at my writing 
to-day to Smith to decline doing the ^arterly article. 
It became (absurd, you will say) a positive pain to me, 
1 couldn't sleep because of it. As it is I go quietly 
on with Little Book, which somehow soothes me. I 
have sent on A.'s letter, but what nonsense his " plan 
of campaign " is ! What does he think of Nelson 
and Collingwood ? — does he blame them for not attack- 
ing Napoleon's flotilla in 1801 ? And yet the flotilla 
were always on the water and off" shore — whereas 
Will's boats were up a river-estuary, and high up on 
land, I take it. You call A. "historical" — to me, 
in all his judgments, moral and physical, there is an 
absolute want of the historical sense. They are sheer 
anachronisms. All that " hatred " of Duke William — 
what a sort of mad herophobia it is ! Take him 
altogether and take him in his time and he is surely 
among the greatest of men. But great men are always 
a puzzle to the Philistines — - to your " right-and- 
wrong," your " truth and falsehood " people. I 
should have thought a sense of humour — of the frog 



248 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

and bull type — would have made A. abstain from 
talk of "abhorring" the Duke. 

But everybody is going in for " strong forms." 
Ruskin lectures on Art at Oxford, and tells 1000 
people (Stubbs gets 20) that a chalk stream does more 
for education than 100 National Schools " with all their 
doctrines of Baptismal Regeneration into the bargain." 
Also that cottages ought to be repaired, because 
" God lives in the poor man's hovel, and it's as well 
He should be well housed." To all which Vice- 
Chancellor and heads of Houses listen plaintively. 

I am much angered by Seeley's fling off at Cam- 
bridge. It is a half-ignorant, half-contemptuous fling 
at his own Chair. He sees the blunder of contrasting 
the utility of " modern " and " ancient " history, and 
then repeats it in another form by deifying Cobden for 
declaring " present history " the only study for sensible 
men. He is just like the classical people who want 
to know Greek and don't care for philology. And 
what does he mean by "present" history? 1788 is 
no more present than 1588, and the Armada tells 
presently on us as much as the French Revolution. 
He cites Lord Palmerston, but if ever there was a 
case of utterly past history it is his. Moreover, 
"the end of the study of history is to make a man" 
not a historian, but " a politician " ! What is the end 
then of the study of politics, or does he consider them 
one and the same ^ Seriously, Kingsley never talked 
such rubbish as this. 

Good-bye. I am afeared the tone of this ain't 
pretty, but I am very tired and down. Good-bye. — 
Ever yours affectionately, J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

New University Club, 
St. James's St., April iZ'jo(J'). 

My dear Freeman — I am afraid I must not 
venture after all down to Somerleaze till the summer 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 249 

is in full swing. My face is quite fat and I look 
better than I have looked for years ; but no real good 
has been done and the least cold throws me back for 
weeks. Even now I have not quite got over the ill 
results of my visit to Minster ; and I am afraid Somer- 
leaze lies too low for me to venture on just yet. It is 
all very provoking, but I am learning slowly that there 
is no way of getting better, but that of " taking care 
in little things " — slowly, for it is a sore trial to care 
about " little things," and life becomes hardly worth 
having at the price. 

Private. I have agreed to set going for Macmillan 
a series o{ historic biographies which I think we talked 
of when we dined together at Tooting. Of course I 
wouldn't take it in hand if I did not think it could be 
done honestly and truthfully, and yet with a certain 
largeness of treatment which should make the men 
types of their time. A short book need not be 
shallow, and a large book need not be big. I have 
set my heart on your doing Casar for me — for good 
or ill he is Rome, and I don't like people to be left 
blindfold to Mommsen and such like. If Bryce will 
do Charles the Greats and Church Dante, and Goldwin 
Smith President Lincoln, and you Caesar, the rest of 
the series would take the right sort of tone and all 
would go well. You may just as well make £,1^^ out 
of 350 octavo pages of not much type as not, and the 
work is work you have done already. A simple series 
of this sort would do a great deal for the historic 
education of English people who — poor souls — cry 
aloud for decent histories, and can't get 'em. 

This is my list as it stands : i , Gotama Buddha, 
and Confucius. 2. David. 3. Pericles. 4. Socrates. 
5. Alexander. 6. Hannibal. 7. Cassar. 8. Con- 
stantine. 9. Mohammed. 10. Charles the Great. 
II. Hildebrand. 12. Dante. 13. Columbus. 14. 
Michael Angelo. 15. Luther. 16. Bacon. 17. Crom- 
well. 18. Newton. 19. Voltaire. 20. Mozart. 21. 
Napoleon. 22. Goethe. 23. Abraham Lincoln. 



250 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

I have finished the first chapter of Little Book, and 
Macmillan is going to set it up in type — so that one 
may have a guide to go by. Don't think me idle 
about it or other things — I do some bit of work every 
day, but work is very hard when one is weak and 
disheartened. Moreover I have put a great deal of 
work into what I have done and have rewritten it 
again and again to get it to my liking. I hope it will 
have gotten to yours — though you will have to forgive 
my " fancies " now and then. But even at the risk of 
fancies one must strive to get something like order out 
of that mere chaos of early history as your Lappen- 
bergs write it. If I fail, I have at any rate fought. 

How delightful this sunshine is ; if you only knew 
how I longed for the spring, and how wearily the 
winter rolled by ! I have no news to tell you — so I 
won't write more. Let me hear from you de Caesare, 
and about your view of my choice of men. I thought 
a good deal over the list but no doubt it has blots 
enough. And tell me all about yourself and Big 
Book. In some ways the next volume will test your 
powers more than any of its predecessors, I mean in 
the social and economic parts, matters on which you 
have said little as yet. But you can say lots if you 
like. 

Good-bye. I could not go down to Cox at Paschal- 
tide. — Yours ever, dear Freeman, 

J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

New University Club, 
St. James's St. 
(^May 1870?). 

My dear Freeman — Many thanks for your sug- 
gestions. Theodoric was in my original list, but some- 
how slipped out. He clearly represents the new 
Teutonic element in Europe. Belisarius I don't see. 
Big William ought in many ways to come in — if only 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 251 

as the last of the Northmen — but your book would 
render him impossible, I am afraid. Fred. II. is 
grandly individual, but hardly a representative man. 
Still there is an absurd gap between Hildebrand and 
Dante, — what do you think of Earl Simon ? Bryce 
puts Francis of Assisi ; Dalgairns whom I met t'other 
day, S. Thomas Aquinas ; but Simon seems to me to 
represent the influence which the Friars and Scholas- 
ticism exercised on Europe at large, and to combine 
with this the representation of the new feeling of 
nationality, and of constitutional freedom, and of de- 
mocracy. Charles Fifth is a mere hook to hang his- 
tory on — Luther is the soul of that time. Will, the 
Silent I must think over, — I like him so much that I 
shan't be very prejudiced against him. 

I chose Csesar because I thought (i) that you had 
written about him, and (2) that you would like to put 
all that horrid stuff of Momrnsen a bit right. But 
Alexander would suit admirably if you would take it. 
Pericles you could do on the political side, but his 
art — his literature — his social side you would turn 
up your nose at, and these are what I want him for. 
Charles Great I want for Bryce, if that shyest of fish 
is in any wise to be landed. 

The Globe announced him t'other day as Regius 
Professor of Civil Law — isn't it too good to be 
true ? 

Tell me when you go to your Warwicks and 
Shrewsburies, and above all to your Peaks — I am 
in very vagrant mood — ordered to be vagrant in fact 
— and if there be an ounce of sunshine you may count 
on my coming. I am delighted you have made out 
Exeter ; and as to Lincoln, I have always gone in for 
wild enthusiasm ever since I dug up its " law-men " 
as late as Henry 1. But who is Coleswegen ? He 
looks as if Cnut's father had somehow got potted in 
the Brompton Boilers ! 

I keep on getting better ; I never was so fat and 
comely in my life, and my lung has begun to move 



252 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

in the right road. But a little thing may upset me 
again, and I hold my life-tenure to be worth very 
little. And if I die Stubbs holds that I am d — d, 
because I don't agree with the Athanasian forgery, 
and Stubbs is an accurate man ! 

Heigho ! I think I would take my chance of 
" Stubbs's doom " if one could only get a peep into 
the darkness. 

I have seen Dawkins several times — just as kind 
and jolly as ever. How one clings to old friends in 
the dark days ! 

Good-bye. Remember me kindly to Cox, he has 
much to forgive concerning Easter. Get me his abso- 
lution. — Ever yours, dear Freeman, 

J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

My dear Freeman — I am infinitely better, and I 
hope the improvement is beginning to look perma- 
nent. I am entirely free from cough and seem strong 
enough as far as feelings go to run anywhere. But I 
know unfortunately that one cold would upset it all ; 
and much as I should like to meet Dickinson and 
Strachey — especially to talk over with the latter our 
little passage of arms in the Pall Mall over Maurice — 
I must not risk it till the weather is more settled. 
However, I shall be seeing Clark to-morrow, and if he 
thinks me the better for a run I will write and warn 
you of my advent. 

I don't think the Academy article the less damaging, 
because it was " so d — d civil " as some one said. 
When we meet I have much to say to you concerning 
Froude and your warfare. Bryce and I — and there are 
no two people on earth who love you better — agree 
in regretting your last attack. What I feel is that the 
publication of the History has placed you in a very 
different position as to these matters from that which 
you occupied previously — placed you so, that is, in the 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 253 

world's eyes, not mine. And hence it looks to the 
said world's eyes as if one famous writer was jealous of 
another famous writer. Of course / know better ; but 
I am grieved and hurt to hear the sort of comments 
that pass about the matter, and the opening it gives to 
the attacks of enemies on you. You won't be annoyed 
at me for speaking frankly, I know ; but I want you 
to come out of the arena. You have floored enough 
victims to satisfy a lifetime, and now you must be con- 
tent to be too great a swell to indulge in the pleasant 
diversion any more. 

Little Book goes on — I think well, at least I know 
I tak^ a great deal of pains with it; and pains that 
won't make any show. I have finished my " Mercian 
Realm " this morning, and done a bit of my " West- 
Saxon Realm." We shall diff^er, of course, a good deal 
on the general philosophy of the matter ; but I think 
you will be pleased with the work. How remarkable 
the relations of Peppin and Charles the Great with the 
English realms are ! But don't think I have done 
much — only about 50 pages of print, i.e. the first chap- 
ter, ending with death of Dunstan. Cap. II., " England 
under Foreign Kings," goes from Cnut to loss of Nor- 
mandy under John. Good-bye. — Yours ever, 

J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

New University Club, 

St. James's St., 

June 1870. 

[The honorary D.C.L. degree was conferred upon 
Freeman in June 1870. Mr. Bryce, as Regius Pro- 
fessor of Civil Law, introduced him in a speech, de- 
scribing him (among other things) as in negligentiorum 
hominum erroribus detegendis acerrimum, eundemque face- 
tiarum plenum^ 

Mv DEAR Freeman — Your telegram arrived too 
late for the train, had I even yielded to its seductions. 



254 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

But Ward who was to have received me had gone 
down, and I was in straits about a bed, not choosing to 
run back the same even. Moreover hot and crowded 
and rowy places are just the places in which I have no 
business. So I reluctantly gave up the notion of seeing 
your Doctorate, great as the pleasure would have been. 
I am glad everything went off so well, — especially 
Bryce. What a charming tongue Latin is for quizzing 
in, and what a taste for quiz a Professorship seems to 
develop in the best of men ! And Bryce is the best of 
men. Did he tell you how I scraught out six lines 
of personality in the proof of my last Middle after a 
walk and a talk with him ? — so great is the power of 
his walk and his talk ! 

I do wish, my dear Freeman, you would leave off 
poking at Kingsley and his Dietrich. Have you ever 
counted up the number of your references to that said 
blunder ? And ought there not to be some proportion 
between sin and punishment? "Blunders" was very 
good ; but there are blunders of taste as well as blun- 
ders of fact, you know ! I am glad you are going to 
create a new historic school of manual writers. Who 
your pupils are I know not; but Macmillan says they 
are ladies, which presents you in a novel and fascinat- 
ing hght, " the Pasha of History surrounded with his 
historic harem ! " as Strangford would have put it. 
"When was Freeman made D.C.L. ? " Proper answer: 
"When Reeve was." Good-bye. — Ever yours, 

J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

New University Club, 
St. James's Street. 

My dear Freeman — I am not nearly so well as I 
was, so it was better that I escaped the excitement of 
Oxford. Here in England I am afraid I shall do no 
further good ; but I have settled to go to San Remo 
for the winter, and one hopes great things from the 
Riviera. . . . 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 255 

I send by the same post the proofs of my first 
chapter, of which you saw a bit. Do you mind the 
trouble of reading them over and giving me all the 
hints you can about the method^ the mode of treatment^ 
I have adopted ? I am just now very blue and dis- 
heartened about the said chapter ; it ought to be far 
better, far clearer than it is, and I shall recast the two 
first sections certainly. But I should care a good deal 
for suggestions from you on this point because clear- 
ness is one of your strong points. Have I tried to get 
in too much, or what is it ? Send back the proofs 
when you have done with them. 

Cox comes up to-day for the Saturday dinner ; I 
don't go myself; rows and dinners are an abomination 
to me just now, but I shall probably see him to-morrow. 
Ward of Manchester called the other day and agreed 
to drop Historical Reviews till the spring, when 1 may 
be well enough to see to it. He was looking very well. 
He has undertaken Gustavus Adolphus for the series. 

Good-bye. Kind remembrances to your people and 
the Historic Harem. — Yours ever, J. R. Green. 



To E. A. Freeman 

New University Club, 

St. James's Street, 

August '70. 

[(Sir) George Grove was at this time connected 
with Messrs. Macmillan.] 

My dear Freeman — I enclose (and please return) 
a letter from George Grove, who has read my proof, 
and whom I asked to tell me what he thought of its 
fitness for " the upper forms in schools and for general 
readers." His verdict is a very severe though a very 
kind one — and unfortunately my own cool judgment 
goes with it. I don't in the least mean that I am 
ashamed of my work ; I worked very hard at it and 
it is genuine so far as it goes — but it does not hit the 



256 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

mark I aimed at, and what is worse, I don't think I 
can hit the mark. The fact is that the first chapter is 
very heavy reading, and the second which I am about 
now is like unto it. I won't repeat G. Grove's remarks, 
but read them and tell me your own opinion. I am 
going to see him on Saturday, and I shall see Mac- 
millan. About Macmillan I have a very strong feel- 
ing of honour — I offered to write a book for " general 
readers," and I can't hold him to his engagement if the 
book is — as it is — unfit for them. And so I shall tell 
him. Please don't think me despondent, — I want to be 
cool and fair, — and I am resolved to write something; 
that is to say, if Macmillan agrees as I think he will I 
might still try to rewrite this chapter in narrative form, 
leaving out 50 per cent of the matter I have packed 
so tight, and chattering more diffusely over the rest. 
But 1 am almost sure I cant do this. If not — then I 
shall at once begin my Angevin Kings. That is to say 
I am determined to do something, and if this failure 
has done nothing else it has given me a longing to 
write what I write in i'^o/^-shape. It was my inability 
to face the notion of a book which kept me so long 
dawdling over the Angevins — now I seem to have got 
used to it, to the method of it at any rate. 

Let me hear more about your excursion to the 

Waters of . You tell me so little about your 

hand that I wish I had you here to pump in 
person. For myself I am slowly getting on, falling 
back every now and then, but getting gradually on 
— only, unfortunately (says Clark), still " miles off 
where you were before you went to Somerset and 
Oxford." I can't imagine what did me so much 
harm save the talk and jest of " Young Oxford." 
But so it is. 

Cox sends me a slip from the Morning Post — a 
review in which all Gladstone's theories about Adam 
and Eve (which Cox only quoted to abuse) are attrib- 
uted to him. Cox, and their promulgation made the 
real aim and purpose of his book. It is certainly very 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 257 

amusing — but I am sure Harwood won't let me do 
anything with it. . . . 

I can't go (unless I were one of the Three Children) 
to S. Remo till November. At present I am tied to 
town by need of seeing my doctor every four days — 
but I shall try and get a run to some dry seaside place. 
Lyme is, I find, a hot, moist hole. — Ever yours, dear 
Freeman, J. R. Green. 

4 Beaumont Street. 



To E. A. Freeman 

New University Club, 
St. James's Street. 

My dear Freeman — Did you ever read any 
novels by one Fritz Reuter, written in Platt-Deutsch ? 
I have just got a charming one. In the Tear '/j, 
" translated " (if one may use the word of a simple 
removal " across the way " into English) by one Lewis, 
who sayeth, " The language in which the story is 
written is closely allied to the Saxon, and has much 
more resemblance to Enghsh than High German has ; 
but it is, nevertheless, a dialect, and bears the same 
relation to the High German as the child's language 
does to the man's." Is not this charming — especially 
that " nevertheless " ? The book suits me just now, 
for it is full, from top to bottom, of abuse of the French, 
and revives my spirits after reading Gladstone's rigma- 
role. What a master of rigmarole he is ; nobody else 
could make one wish Palmerston alive again as Gladdie 
is making almost everybody wish just now. As to the 
war I heard good news this morning from France. 
A Havre merchant writes, " I have met no merchant 
here who doesn't hate this iniquitous war," and one 
of the von Glehns who is in a large engineer's office 
in Northern France writes that every workman there 
condemns it as " unjust." The spirit in Germany is 
wonderfully good. On the morning of the war-news. 



258 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

a young German in a city office walked straight into 
the counting-house and asked Mr. von Glehn to allow 
him to start at " once." " I fought," he said, " at 
Sadowa with a heavy heart — for it was German against 
German — but it is different now ! " That is a good 
answer to Monsieur Ollivier's " coeur Veger^ The head 
of a large lunatic asylum in Hanover writes — "Nine of 
my keepers are gone to the war and I am in great 
straits how to manage the patients ; but my chief 
sorrow is that I cannot go to the war myself ^ I hope 
when the war is over they will just lock up all France 
— turn it into a gigantic National Asylum and keep 
every man of 'em in a strait-waistcoat. Humphry 
Ward, who is at Lannion in Brittany, writes of a 
French Marquis of " the old rock " who loafs about 
there pleasantly and approves the war. " France can 
only keep together by a fight every five years," he 
said, — whereon Ward, who is a good-tempered fellow, 
thought that "the sooner she went to pieces the 
better," which the Marquis didn't like. 

As to myself and my own work, without going with 
you on the Grove question — for I still think his com- 
ments very frank and valuable — I confess 1 am braced 
up again by your letter. I shall alter much of what I 
have done ; but I shall go on. On a point of this 
kind your judgment is so weighty that I feel bound to 
accept it, — at any rate to the extent of trying to do 
something with the book. It won't be what 1 wanted 
it to be, but if it does some good I shall feel abundantly 
rewarded ; and my feeling of delicacy about Mac- 
millan is removed by his hearty letter of encourage- 
ment this week. But I shall also go on with the 
Angevins (i) because I have reopened the old note- 
books and am simply astonished at the work I have 
done for it, so much is all but ready for the press that 
it seems absurd to leave it alone ; (2) because it is a 
relief to me — so I find — from the Little Book, which is 
hard and not interesting work ; and (3) because I see 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 259 

that Little Book will do nothing for one's historic 
fame except among a little group of good people. I 
did this morning an appendix on the Sources of 
Angevin history ; in which, I think, I have made out 
the real character of the Gesta — a difficult point, as 
you know, when taken in relation to the work of 
Thomas of Loches and the Gesta Ambaxiensium Domi- 
norum. The real second part of the latter work I 
beheve to be lost ; and the Gesta which now stands as 
such a second part to be really a revision of it by John 
of Marmoutiers — so that D'Achery's arrangement, 
though unwarranted by MS., is practically right. 
Many J many thanks. Good-bye. — Ever yours, 

J. R. Green. 

4. Beaumont Street, W., 
August 31, 1870. 

My dear Freeman — I wish I could have been 
with you on your northern campaign — the more that 
Durham is the one English place I long to see, and 
" Baeda's own choir standing " would drive me wild 
with delight. But quiet and boredom are the only 
things that do me good ; they are setting me right 
again — and then the sunshine and the war ! Not that 
I go wholly with you in your prayers that the Gal- 
Welsh be cut short; I am German to the core, but 
like Joan of Arc I have pity for that bel royaume de 
France. How strange it seems now to remember the 
night when you and I looked from the Quai Voltaire 
over Seine on the Tuileries and chaunted a psalm about 
a green bay tree ! But L. N. B. is gone, and France 
remains, vain, ignorant, insufferable if you will, but 
still with an infinite attraction in her, at least to me. 
There is a spring, an elasticity about her, a " light 
heart" that has its good as well as its bad side, a 
gaiety, a power of enjoyment, which Europe can't 
afford to miss. I am a little Hke Heine, I think ; with 
an infinite respect for Berlin I should prefer living at 
Paris. ' Who knows, too, what this war may do for 



26o LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

her ? not if Germany ensures a century of war by taking 
Elsass and Lorraine, but if certain now of her own 
strength she leaves France prostrate, convinced of her 
folly, but not humiliated. The best time of French 
history followed the overthrow of '15; why should 
not another half century of letters and poetry and art 
follow '70 ? In spite of one's historical predilections 
the claim of Elsass is to me revolting. As yet the 
attitude of Germany is noble ; to snatch at provinces 
in the old style of Louis XIV. is of the lowest and 
vulgarest ambition. Moreover, the people of Elsass 
are French to the core in sympathy, none are more 
bound to France, and the treaty that hands them over 
to a Grand Duke of Baden is simply a declaration of 
slavery. Men are not cattle — even if they have the 
ill-luck to be Frenchmen. 

But enough of politics. I am glad to hear of " Prae- 
academic Oxford," though you are a little like your 
German friends in taking my Elsass. Oddly enough I 
am doing a couple of papers for George Grove on the 
early history of Oxford, — but I shall wait and see 
whether you have left anything for me to say. My 
greatest delight of late has been the new volume of Hove- 
den, and Stubbs's preface concerning William Long- 
champ and the revolution that upset him. It is very 
masterly indeed, not merely in the routing out of every- 
thing about Longchamp himself and Bishop Puiset (both 
highly mysterious folk hitherto), but in the telling of 
the story. I don't indeed think that the dear Professor 
quite likes owning the greatness of a " revolution," and 
he owns this was one; but still he brings out, with 
singular clearness and force, how striking a prelude to the 
Charter this Convention of London was. There is to be 
yet another volume in whose preface Stubbs will examine 
the constitutional history of Richard's reign. For which 
and all other mercies Heaven make us truly thankful ! 

I am all alone here ; everybody I know out of town ; 
but I am getting used to it, and rather like my solitary 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 261 

rambles in the Parks. Still I am " truly grateful " for 
letters, — so don't forget to write to me soon, and tell 
me all about your stay with Macmillan. Remember 
me kindly to him and Mrs. Macmillan. I wish I were 
with you all. 

Good-bye. — Ever yours, J. R. Green. 

P.S. — Don't mistake me about the war. I can't kick 
France now she's down, as Jupiter does ; but the German 
victories are victories of truth and right and intelligence. 



To E. A. Freeman 

4 Beaumont Street, W., 
September 5, 1870. 

My dear Freeman — . . . Vive la Republique, — 
one can't write about past things when the present is 
so vast, — when every telegram comes in upon one's 
thoughts like a thunder-clap. Vive la Republique ! but 
will the Republic live ? The men in blouses hooted, 
as they passed it, that figure on the column in the Place 
Vendome ; but what of the peasants of Champagne in 
whom " the Napoleonic legend " is as alive as ever, or 
the peasants of the south ready to tear Protestants to 
pieces for treason to the Emperor ? The army is gone, 
— that is one thing to the good, — but will it be possible 
to raise a patriot army in its place ? And then the 
Republic starts terribly handicapped. In eight days at 
latest Germany will be beneath the walls of Paris. If 
the revolution gives fresh life, fresh enthusiasm, it wastes 
time and time is now all in all. Every office will be in 
confusion, every department at a deadlock. France 
will be thrown out of gear just when her machinery 
needs to run quickest and smoothest. Submission, 
peace, seems inevitable ; but what a submission, what 
a peace ! Just as the great Bonaparte threw the odium 
of a " humiliating peace " on the Bourbons, so the 
second throws it on the Republic. Is there a Govern- 
ment that would stand a day after the cession of Elsass ? 



262 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

And yet the alternative is the most frightful jacquerie 
the world has ever seen. It looks as if the Republic 
must sink either under the shame of a peace or the 
horrors of a Terror. 

One forgets all lesser troubles in the massacres of 
day after day. But some have been just brought home 
to me here by the arrival of an English clergyman's 
family from Compiegne, where he is a chaplain. They 
have been there for years, and now their home is broken 
up and they are hurried off; the father being allowed 
to stay in charge of the furniture and plate which they 
were not permitted to remove. Their distress is great, 
and yet of course nothing to the bulk of the 40,000 
English who have been driven away from Paris and its 
neighbourhood. 

I am so lonely here (there is not a person in London ; 
I have nobody even to exchange a word with) that I 
shall take to Saturday Review work again. I have just 
sent in a middle on Rochester and a review, and now 
I suppose I must, to please Harwood, do a " light " 
middle. But how write " light middles " with the guns 
of Sedan in one's ears ? However, one can make mock 
of one's own ailments, — so I shall offer up myself and 
my doctor. 

September 13. — Thanks for your letter. Even the 
seduction of a Dukedom for Bryce won't bring me 
over to your " partition Treaty." The fact is I am a 
little puzzled with " Liberals " who go in for enslaving 
Lorraine and turning Elsass, as Bismarck puts it, into 
a " German Venetia." It is not a question of loving 
France or loving Germany. It is a question of falling 
back on the platform of the Treaty of Vienna and 
dealing with peoples as if they were cyphers. Your 
indifference to the will of the people themselves is of 
the old Tory and Metternich order. I never yet met 
a French provincial to whom France was not more than 
his own province. In Normandy, for instance, you 
never could get a Norman to see things in your way. 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 263 

Alsatians I meet now every day at Sydenham ; they 
speak German, but they are French to the core. There 
can be no question about the Lorrainers. The truth is 
you care a good deal for freedom in the past, — but in 
the present you hate France more than you love liberty. 

I have just seen a lot of letters from Paris, etc., and 
the tone is very despairing indeed. At Paris " no one 
will fight but the Garde Nationale. The soldiers are 
panic-struck and mutinous." At Havre Trochu 
ordered the town to defend itself, but this involved a 
demolition of the villas on the heights and the merchants 
declared the sacrifice " useless." All the letters cry for 
peace, peace " on any terms." So it is possible you may 
play chuck-farthings with the rights of peoples as you 
wish. My one hope is in Bismarck. 

I am sorry about the Deanery business. But the 
tendency to turn the Church into a casual ward is, I 
know, irresistible. I am glad to be out of it. Good- 
bye. — Ever yours, dear Freeman, J. R. Green. 



To E. A. Freeman 

New University Club, 
St. James's Street, S.W. 

[John Byrne Leicester Warren (i 835-1 891), after- 
wards Lord de Tabley, the poet, was an old friend of 
Green's.] 

My dear Freeman — Leicester Warren has just done 
a kindly thing, offering to lay my name before some 
connection of his who has a living of some 300 people 
and as many pounds, and who is looking out for a 
Vicar. But though I am far better than I once hoped 
to be, I mustn't think of livings just yet. The least 
thing throws me back ; I read service at St. Philip's a 
Sunday or two ago by way of trial, and my cough 
increased at once. You will see how utterly out of the 
question your proposal to help Dimock would be. 
Clearly my wise course is to spend this next winter and 



264 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

spring in Italy, and so hope to come back patched up 
into some practical form for the coming year. I have 
settled upon S. Remo in the Corniche, and should like, 
— if my companion Lambert could go at once^ — to get 
there by Germany, Antwerp, Koln, Nuremberg, Inns- 
pruck, and the Brenner, — the other Alpine passes would 
be too cold for me now, and France-way is closed. In 
this way I could peep at Milan and Genoa, and so get 
along the " Corniche " to S. Remo. 

My friend Gabriel Monod came hither the other 
day on his way with the French Protestant ambulance 
which he is aiding from Sedan to the lines before Paris. 
I think if you knew him you would believe there are 
good Frenchmen even out of Normandy, — though by- 
the-bye his family is Danish and his birthplace Havre ! 
It was odd to get so close a sight of the eve of Sedan as 
he gave me. The ambulance was at Rancourt, the next 
village to Beaumont, when the French soldiers came 
pouring in, weary, starved, mutinous. They had had 
no rations for two days, and snatched at the few loaves 
which Monod could give them, while others plundered 
the fields round for potatoes. Then all flung them- 
selves down to sleep as they could, and the Imperial 
staff came clattering along the streets, — the Emperor, 
old, way-worn, covered with dust, his cheeks pasty-pale, 
his hair and moustache gray-white, entering the house 
out of which the Monods had been turned for his ac- 
commodation. All night long thousands came strag- 
gling in, — flinging themselves down exhausted for a few 
hours' sleep. At early morning the Emperor's horse 
was called for, and the suite appeared all spick and span 
in the midst of the mob of soldiery. Napoleon himself 
at the door, "painted to the eyes" said Monod, his 
hair and moustache dyed and waxed again. One or 
two peasants cried Vive TEmpereur^ — the soldiers looked 
on grimly, and some shouted back A has T assassin and 
the filthiest words of abuse. Napoleon passed a group 
of officers on his way to his horse ; he took off his hat 
and made a low salute, but not one responded. " Why 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 26s 

does not somebody shoot the scoundrel ? " said a cap- 
tain aloud to Monod as " the scoundrel " passed by. 
Then the cannon opened from the woods, and the offi- 
cers rode in vain to the front striving to form and drag 
up their men, — but the soldiers were a mere mob, 
cursing, scattering for food, flying " Hke sheep," while 
the officers swore and quarrelled with one another, and 
De Failly and his staff rode about like men " lost." 
Then came work with the wounded and Monod saw 
no more. What an awful opening of those awful 
Three Days ! Imagine that man with his thoughts 
falling back to the courtyard at Strasbourg where sol- 
diers Jiad shouted abuse at him thirty years _ before. 
What an interval of time, of events, to bring him back 
only to the same curses ! . . . 

Good-bye. Write a long letter. — Yours ever, 

J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

Due Torri, Verona, 
October 31, 1870. 

[Green's companion was the Rev. Brooke Lambert, 
afterwards Vicar of Greenwich.] 

My dear Freeman — ... I am writing at Brus- 
sels, and have spun through a bit of France from 
Calais to Lille just to get a glimpse of it under stress 
of war. Mob-lots lounged idly about Calais, a weedy, 
boyish lot, fresh from the plough, and " Nationals " 
were at the gates. Calais is dull and desolate — no 
mails for Paris — packets bringing in a dozen instead 
of two hundred passengers. But it was not till we 
got to Lille that we saw war at hand. The poplar- 
rows were roughly thinned, and the trees left were 
stripped to the top to rob the enemy of cover ; new 
forts were being busily thrown up, the sticky soil aid- 
ing admirably, and rows of comfortable houses stood 
empty and doomed, ready to be blown up at the first 



266 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

appearance of the Germans. King Will's announce- 
ment of the surrender of Metz met us (of all places 
in the world) at Aachen ; flags and streamers an- 
nounced it at Koln ; fifty guns in honour of it woke us 
at Maintz next morning. It was odd to be sweeping 
along quietly on the very skirts of the great storm. 
Troop-trains passed us, honest German faces looking 
cheerily out of windows ; sick and wounded limped 
about the platform at Koln ; one poor boy, a mere 
boy, all pale and worn, with a shot through his shoul- 
der, supping his onion soup in a corner, and people 
stopping to say a cheerful word to him and pass on. 
Johanniter knights, too, very fierce creatures with 
very long swords, guarding piles of red-cross luggage, 
and red-cross trains passing us on the road as we 
swept down the valley of Main and away to Miinchen. 
Pleasant for you folk who " rejoice in war " as the 
Psalmist says, but I am a poor weak-nerved creature 
who have seen too much human suffering in my time 
to think the world needs more of it than God gives 
it, and all the telegrams and bunting and guns in 
the world won't make me forget that white boy's face 
at Koln. 

But then you know, I shiver even at an honest bit 
of cold, at the cold of the Rhine, at the colder of the 
Iser, at the coldest, dreariest, sleetiest of Innspruck. 
Brooke wrapped me in a great fur cloak wherein I lay 
like a dormouse, or heaven knows how I escaped colds 
— " colds being death with you " as my sententious 
Scotch doctor pithily puts it. I don't know what I 
should have done if it hadn't been for my companion, 
Lambert, a rough strong fellow with all the tenderness 
and gentleness of a woman ; if it hadn't been for 
Virgil too, whose JEneid I took with me and find 
charming beyond measure. I had never read it since 
I rushed through it in schoolboy fashion with my tutor 
at Leamington. But even Virgil looked chill the 
morning we left Innspruck with a cold sleet driving 
on the windows and the landlord's assurance that "it 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 267 

would be worse over the Brenner." And lo ! our woes 
were over. I had been before over the Brenner by- 
night, and anything more desolate I cannot fancy — 
but by day and such a day nothing could be lovelier. 
" No scenery " you say ; very well, only sunshine, 
*' real sunshine " as one little English boy said as we 
flung off our wraps, and sprang out on the warm 
platform at Brixen. . . . Good-bye, dear Freeman. — 
Yours ever, J. R. Green. 



To Miss Louise von Glehn 

Villa Congreve, San Remo, 
November 25, 1870. 

... It is curious to watch the little glimpses of 
Italian life which one gets in the little world of San 
Remo. Take the priesthood for instance. Recent 
changes have diminished their number, but the "black 
gentry " still swarm here, and over the poor and old 
women their influence remains as strong as ever. They 
are keen in their hopes about England and the Pus- 
eyites, whom by a felicitous pun they always term 
Posaista (posture-makers). But with Italian caution 
they shrug their shoulders over the Council and its 
dogma of Infallibility — it is venturing too much they 
think. The monks have gone of course, but a few 
Capuchins remain, and their retention shows how im- 
possible the suppression of monasteries would have 
been had their occupants had the least life in them. 
When the cholera attacked San Remo all the priests 
and monks fled in a body save the Capuchins, and so 
strong was the gratitude they won that San Remo 
nearly rose in revolt at the news of their suppression, 
and prevailed on the government to sanction their 
exceptional retention of their old monastery. 

It is curious too to note how very modern all real 
life is in Italy. "Everything here dates from 1848," 
a gentleman told me the other day. The older men 
still retain the habit of silence and suspicion, which was 



268 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

a necessity under the older arbitrary rule in Piedmont. 
A professor at Tazzen, to whom our friend Congreve 
laughingly complained of his extreme caution and 
reticence, apologised by saying he could not shake 
off the habit of a lifetime. " I was once hurried off 
at an hour's notice to prison, kept there six months, 
and never learnt what my crime was. It was a word, 
but I never knew what." Even cafes were forbidden, 
or so restricted that they were avoided as unsafe. An 
odd result of this was that people lived by preference 
out of the way in their own estates in the country. 
Now that freedom has come there has been a great 
move in upon the towns, and the charms of cafe life 
have robbed the country of its residents. The change 
is not a healthy one for "Young Italy," which is 
growing up godless, indolent, spiritless, with little love 
for anything but lounging and billiards. — Ever yours, 

J. R. Green. 

To W, Boyd Dawkins 

San Remo, 

November 26, 1870. 

Did you stare at Victor Emanuel's head, my dear 
Dawkins, and wonder who the . . . was writing to 
you from this side the Alps ? I am in exile here, a 
refugee from English frost and fog and east wind. 
I started from home about a month ago, and came 
quickly across Germany and the Brenner, getting queer 
peeps at the war by the way. It was odd to see the 
weedy boys of the Garde Mobile staring into the shop 
windows 3.t Calais, and the new mud forts rising at 
Lille, and quiet Germans staring at the new telegram 
of the surrender of Metz just stuck up at Aachen, 
and the guns thundering their salute at Mayentz, and 
the wounded hobbling over the platform at Cologne. 
" Why do you not illuminate ? " I asked one of the 
townsmen at Mayentz. " We are waiting for the sur- 
render of Paris," he answered quietly. I can hardly 
picture the delight of our passage from the rain and 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 269 

the cold of Germany into the sunshine of Italy. " Oh, 
mamma, this is the real sun ! " a little boy cried out, 
as he jumped out on the platform at Brixen, and the 
warm sun of Italy came waking us all into a new life 
and enjoyment. We had it with us at Verona and 
Milan and Genoa, at each of which we lingered for a 
few days before trotting along the Corniche to this 
winter retreat. 

Here one is in a quiet semicircle of low hills, 
sheltered by the Apennines behind, and glowing with 
warm sunshine, and fine bright air. A lower hill rises 
in the midst, and from summit to base the little town 
of San Remo tumbles like a cataract of stone into 
the sea. All round it are gardens of orange and vine 
and lemon, and gardens still abloom with flowers (I 
counted twenty-six different kinds of plants in flower in 
one garden to-day), and oranges waiting like golden 
globes hanging on their trees for gathering at Christmas- 
tide, and palms rising close to the shore, and all round 
a background of soft olive woods. There is no sign 
of winter, no stript trees or withered leaves ; even the 
rain here is soft and warm, and one goes out without 
wrap or great-coat on the worst days. I have been 
a little imprudent ; the air was so exhilarating, and my 
physical strength returned so quickly, that I overdid 
myself at first ; but I have learnt prudence, and I can 
hardly doubt from what I already feel that I shall 
return a very different man next spring. 

What are you doing, dear Dax ? I read the first of 
your " Cave digging " papers before leaving England, 
and it recalled pleasantly enough days long gone by. 
Do you remember those first " diggings," and my cold, 
and the queer adventures, spoonings, and counter- 
spoonings at the W's. ? What years have passed since 
then, and how much has changed in both of us ! But I 
hope the friendship of those old days remains as warm 
as ever, old boy ! 

Write to me when you can. Letters are very 
pleasant here, almost as pleasant as your visits were in 



270 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

London. It was worth being ill to find how true and 
tender old friends could be. Remember me very 
kindly to your wife, and to Ward when you see him. 
When you write tell me all about yourself^ and your 
doings and beings. 

Good-bye. — BeHeve me, ever yours, dear Dawkins, 

J. R. Green. 

To Miss von Glehn 

Villa Congreve, San Remo, 

November 28, 1870. 

I have just come in from such a glorious sunset, 
dear Olga, a sunset yet more glorious than the sunsets 
of the Lagoon, those fatal sunsets to me. The circle 
of hills around lay soft and dusk with olive woods, 
their barer rocks bathed in deep orange, and beyond — 
between them and the waning blue of the sky — lay a 
range of further hills glowing with intense rose light. 
And all round the horizon a band of pale orange 
parted the sea from the sky. I shouted with joy as I 
hung over the balcony, watching till all was gray, and 
the cool night drove me in. 

It is so pleasant reading your letter over again — just 
as if we were chatting together in our frivolous way, 
despised of Louise and the wiser sort. Ah, well, dear 
Olga, the time will come when these wise ones will be 
glad to be frivolous too. Let them have their wisdom 
now, poor things ! To-day I have been chatting with 
a Bishop, and am very frivolous. . . . Yesterday (I 
was at Church, you sceptical person !) he treated us 
to some remarks on " We brought nothing into this 
world, and certainly we shall carry nothing out." 
"Yes, my brethren," he said cheerfully, "we brought 
sin into this world, and we may carry sin out ! " 
Don't you enjoy it ? I fed on that sentence all the 
quiet Sunday evening. 

Your industry rebukes me dreadfully. But what 
can I do ? " My tub is on the sea," as Byron sings, 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 271 

the tub in which I packed books, papers, clothes, every- 
thing. I am hke Mariana, and sing "it cometh not" 
from my moated grange. I sit there day by day, 
hatless, shirtless, bootless, bookless, and watch " the 
stately ships go on to their haven under the hill " of 
San Remo, " but oh for the sight of a vanished tub, 
or the news of a bark that lies still ! " " Tennyson is 
a sweet poet," a girl said to me to-day, "you can 
always find a verse of his for every feeling, every 
event." There are many theories about the tub. 
Some say it remains in the British docks. Some, that 
it has been seen at Marseilles serving as a barricade for 
the Reds. One bold man reports it to have been 
seen floating in the Bay of Biscay with a cynical figure 
peeping out of it, who on being hailed replied, " I am 
the ghost of a Saturday Reviewer." Luckily nothing 
is of any particular importance in this world. I read 
my Virgil calmly by the sea beach, and watch the 
stately ships go on. 

We are here in the most charming villa in all San 
Remo, with the most agreeable of men, laughing, 
chatting, idling the long day through. The rain seems 
to have cleared away, but really it is very hard to 
grumble at rain which never keeps you in the whole 
day, which calls for no great-coat, and leaves beauty 
and colour in earth and sea and sky. However it is 
fine at last, and in its stead is this soft sunshine and 
fresh bright air. I have quite got over my little 
tumble back, the result of a wild rush up to a hill 
village, and am getting on marvellously. Yes, you 
may drink my Burton ! Drop a tear in the bowl, 
Olga, as you quaflT the nectar, a tear of sweet resolve 
to write to him who drank that Burton in happier 
days at once. And do write chatty letters. There are 
none I like so much. Tell me all about everybody. 
I am bothered by the coming of the Taits. I know 
my attractions, but still they might have chosen some 
other spot. Am I to be driven to wear a white tie — 
to talk of Voysey, and to chaperon Miss Spooner? 



272 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Never, ye Gods ! However, they have put themselves 
in Cook's charge — says scandal — so they may perhaps 
never arrive. Fly, gloomy thought ! Good-bye, dear 
Olga, give my love and kind memories to all at the 
Hill of Peak, and believe me ever your affectionate 
friend, J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

Villa Congreve, San Remo, 
December 2, 1870. 

I am afraid by your silence, dear Freeman, that a 
letter I sent you from Verona never reached you. 
Since then I have run across Italy, seen Milan with its 
Duomo and Saint Ambrogio, Genoa with its palaces, 
bay after bay of the Corniche glowing with a summer's 
sun and the vegetation of spring, and last not least 
this delicious San Remo where we have been settled 
nearly a month. Conceive a semicircle of low hills 
covered with olive woods, with the higher Appenines 
behind screening off every wind, and enclosing a httle 
space deep in gardens and olive groves, and broken by 
a hill which rises suddenly from the shore. From 
summit to base of this hill the old town of San Remo 
rushes down like a cataract of stone. It is the sort of 
town one sees nowhere out of Italy, a huddled mass of 
houses and vaults and arches hanging somehow on to a 
hillside as steep as a house-roof, and pierced by narrow 
lanes propped everywhere by huge arches against earth- 
quakes, and sometimes suddenly disappearing under 
continuous vaults to dip out again into the old blinding 
sun-glare. Historically it seems to have risen on the 
ruins of Ventimigha, the old capital of the Ligurians 
of this coast (the IntimigHi), to have been originally a 
creation of the Archbishops of Genoa as one of their 
manors, then to have shaken off their lordship, and 
finally to have settled hke the other towns of the coast 
into Genoese dependence. The church of San Siro is 
horribly muddled and buried under seventeenth century 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 273 

restoration, like all the churches hereabout (for the 
** revival " of San Carlo Borromeo was good for piety 
but terrible for art), but the fabric remains twelfth- 
century work, and very good work. It is interesting 
to me as the one relic left of the old Communa : earth- 
quakes and " the Saracens " have swept away all the 
rest. " The Saracens " are very familiar friends here ; 
every ruin is their doing and every fort erected against 
them. It is a little startling to find that the raids of 
Algerian and Tunisian pirates were the scourge of this 
coast as late as 1750. 

Talking of " Communes " reminds me of your 
pretty paper on Chester. But your descriptions of 
towns puzzle me very much by leaving steadily out all 
reference to the town itself. Chester with its peculiar 
relations to the Earls ought in any municipal sense to 
be a very interesting place. I am just now in an agony 
about our dear French places. Imagine fighting going 
on at Le Mans and divisions marching on Angers ! 
" Annexation " seems further off than ever, I think ; 
but though I don't want to see the old rapine-policy 
successful again, I do want to see Paris brought low. 
My ideal end of the war would be — Paris surrendered 
after a good bombardment, Elsass and Lorraine voting 
freely as to their political destinies, and then a slow 
march of the Germans home again, their bands playing 
** Come, if you dare ! " But I believe Bismarck to be 
the only man who agrees with me in this ; and he, poor 
man, has no chance against " the noise of professors 
and the madness of the people," as David sang. 
Thanks very much for your protest against the revival 
of our Crimean iniquities. But what a queer band 
of Protestants you are : J. S. Mill hand in hand with 
Lord Shaftesbury and you lying down with James 
Anthony Froude ! 

For myself, I am going on wonderfully well ; my 
English cold has vanished, and I am twice as strong as 
I was when I left home. We pity you miserable 
Britishers who lie in fog darkness and the shadow of 



274 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

death, while we revel great-coat-and-wrap-less in sun- 
shine, with oranges on the trees and branches loaded 
with lemons and roses in the gardens and violets in 
the hedgerows — I mean field-walls, for hedges there be 
none, and the fields are strips of hillside propt with 
terraces. Still live while you live, and write me at once 
a, full account of yourself and your doings. How goes 
on the Harem — the Historic Harem, I mean ? Good- 
bye. Remember me kindly to Mrs. Freeman and your 
family ; and believe me, ever yours, 

J. R. Green. 

To Miss Louise von Glehn {Mrs. Creighton) 

Villa Congreve, San Remo, 
December 21, 1870. 

I have never given you a peep at our social life here, 
dear Louise. As to women-kind our range is more 
extensive than varied. Mrs. A. is a good-natured vale- 
tudinarian who talks you dead. Her daughter re- 
minds one of a description of a lady, " rather pretty, 
but her clothes seem to have been made for somebody 
else and then worn on a night journey ! " Feminine 
Germans abound at the hotels ; there is an English 
parson's wife of an aristocratic turn, and the young wife 
of an American " meenistir," who seems to do her 
religion and her shopping on the same hard-bargain 
principle. We have nine parsons beside the archbishop, 
and a chaplain who kept us waiting half an hour for 
the service last Sunday and then told us in his sermon, 
" Christians have in every age been known as a waiting 
people." We have a club where young Italy does its 
billiards and young England its Times, and an engineer 
and naval officer, each equally crippled in his interior, 
play cribbage till dewy eve. We have three English 
doctors and four German ones driven by stress of war 
from Monaco and Mentone, together with a German 
band. The German doctors cluster all day round the 
map of Paris and vow vengeance for the loss of their 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 



275 



fees. Of the English ones Dr. A. has two patients, 
his cook and housemaid, just to keep his hand in ; Dr. 
B. not being able to find a legitimate patient has per- 
suaded a young lady in perfect health to take arsenic 
for the good of her complexion ; and Dr. C. has no 
patient at all. Their despair was converted into wild 
revolt against heaven yesterday by the sudden arrival 
of five German doctors more. Luckily they were dis- 
covered to be army doctors, who had been captured by 
Chanzy, and in defiance of the Geneva Convention sent 
coolly to the south, and huddled by gendarmes over 
the frontier at Nice. Italian gendarmes (a gorgeous 
body with cocked hats and toga-like cloaks flung over 
the left shoulder) at once seized on them and hurried 
them off to the Syndic, who not knowing what to do 
with them ordered them off to prison. On this Con- 
greve and others protested and demanded their release. 
The Syndic said, " upon his word that step had never 
occurred to him," but comphed ; and so the poor 
fellows were feasted at the cafe, and forwarded next 
morning to their native land. 

Nothing is more natural than the feeling you have so 
often expressed to me of your own deficiencies. One no 
sooner grasps the real bigness of the world's work than 
one's own effort seems puny and contemptible. Then, 
again, one comes across minds and tempers so infinitely 
grander and stronger than one's own that one shrinks 
with a false humility from any seeming rivalry with 
them in noble working. And then again in the very 
effort to do anything, however small, one is hampered 
by circumstances at every step till we are inclined to 
throw up the fight in despair. It is just the souls that 
long to do the noblest work that feel most their own 
immeasurable inferiority to it. No people tumble about 
so despairingly in the Slough of Despond. Moses felt 
himself a man of stammering lips ; Elijah sank under 
the juniper ; Burns went silently, moodily, about his 
farmwork, longing for the song that never came. But 



276 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

it came at last. The thing is, I think, to think less of 
ourselves and what we are to our work, and more of 
our work and what it is to us. The world moves 
along, not merely by the gigantic shoves of its hero- 
workers, but by the aggregate tiny pushes of every 
honest worker whatever. All may give some tiny push 
or other and feel that they are doing something for 
mankind. " Circumstances " spur as much as they 
hinder us ; it is in the struggle day by day with them 
that we gain muscle for the real life fight ; and the 
sense of the superiority of others is a joy to those who 
really work, not for themselves, but for the good of 
man. What they cannot do they rejoice that others 
can. Respice finem^ the old monks used to say in their 
meditations on life — " consider the end." And' so it 
must be. To work well we must look to the end ; 
not death, but the good of mankind ; not self-improve- 
ment in itself, but simply as a means to the improve- 
ment of the race. Don't think this too big an end to 
look to — one must look greatly forward to the great. 
In the light of it, one sees how the very patience of a 
thwarted day may be one's " work " to the end. . . . 
— Yours ever, J. R. Green. 

To Miss von Glehn 

Villa Congreve, San Remo, 

January 9, 1871. 

I can't delay an hour in replying to a letter so full 
of friendship and real confidence as yours, dear Olga. 
. . . It is the lot of man and woman here and there to 
face life alone, and if it be one's lot I suppose one must 
bear it bravely and silently. But it is a lot which no 
one need woo for themselves. A single life need not 
be a selfish life, but it must be an incomplete one. The 
" stronger women " of the future will no doubt get rid 
of a vast deal of empty sentiment which English girls 
out of sheer idleness call love ; the men playing at 
affections which they go in for, " 'cos they've nothin' 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 277 

else to do ! " I have always protested (lightly or 
gravely) against the degradation of love in the hands 
of the ordinary English girl — her perpetual fingering 
it and playing at it, as I have always protested against 
her like degradation of music or art. But this was 
not because I disbelieved in love, but because I believed 
in it so intensely. The self-education of " stronger 
women," if it frees them from the necessity of amus- 
ing themselves with perpetual love-making, will only 
strengthen them for a greater and a nobler love. And 
perhaps they will find that this greatness and nobleness 
consists in what you laugh at as " the ignominious 
thing, of marrying for a home and for the love of a 
husband." After all the " wooing and winning," the 
whispers and love-letters, the sweet quarrels and sweeter 
reconciliations, are a poor childish thing beside the love 
of wedded life — the trust, the self-sacrifice, the quiet 
daily growth of affection, the strange, sweet sense of a 
double life, of a life at last more than double, multiplied 
a thousandfold by the new child-faces, enlarged and 
enriched v/ith every new responsibility or peril. I was 
looking out over the sea to-day with your letter in my 
hand thinking how — even if I live on (and I am not so 
well again) — all this is lost to me. 

We are gayer than we were. The German band 
which usually spends the winter enticing folk to rouge 
et noir at Monaco has been driven out by the French 
authorities, and so has put in here. It is a capital 
band, full of fire and precision, with a really good 
conductor ; and the two concerts they have given had 
a real Crystal Palace smack about them. Verdi of 
course haunts every Italian concert-room ; in fact 
they are only just beginning to appreciate Beethoven 
at Milan ! Still the programmes make a good fight 
for the true faith. Moreover I am a wee bit happy 
at the prospect of Humphry Ward's arrival on his way 
home from Capri. " You women," who are so con- 
temptuous of " us men," know little of the ardour and 



278 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

fire of men's friendship. If he don't loiter too long In 
Rome, I have a sort of design to walk along the coast 
to Nizza with him, doing very short spells every day, 
and carrying our baggage on a donkey behind us. The 
bit of ground between Mentone and Nizza which 
everybody scuttles over by train is the prettiest along 
the whole coast. We are already planning (it may be 
a mere vision) a month's stay at Florence in the spring 
before our return home. Here one gets Italian sea 
and sky, Italian colour and warmth and beauty ; but 
after all one longs to be more among the Italy that has 
told upon the world of men, of art, of letters, the Italy 
of Dante, of RafFaelle, of Galileo. And Florence sums 
up in a strange way this Italy, as Rome sums it up in 
the past. ... — Ever yours, J. R. Green. 

To Mrs. Churchill Babington {Mrs. W. H. Wright) 

Villa Congreve, San Remo, 
January 9, 1871. 

I have just begun Italian, dear M., that I may read 
Dante, as I have read Virgil and Spencer since my 
coming here. In his English translation he was the 
first great poet I really loved. Years before I cared 
for even Shakespeare or had read a line of Tennyson, 
the cheap plaster-bust of the great Florentine stood in 
the " study " of my boyish schooldays. Partly, no 
doubt, this was owing to the quality which distinguishes 
him from all other poets — his dealing throughout, I 
mean, with real men and women. Carlyle talks non- 
sense about poetry being useless because it is " untrue." 
The passions, the emotions, the woes and sorrows of 
the " Idylls " or the " In Memoriam," are as " true " as 
those of the most prosaic history in the world. But 
no doubt the fictitious characters in which they are 
expressed tell insensibly on the amount of credence, or 
perhaps pleasure, we attach to them. The love of 
Francesca, the death-despair of Ugolino, derive, it is 
certain, somewhat of their force from the fact that 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 



279 



Ugolino and Francesca actually loved and died. Every 
character is that of an actually living man. We jostle 
among a crowd of real people and this gives a peculiar 
force and life-likeness to the work. 



Jan. II. — I saw a weird, Dantesque sight to-day that 
only Italy I think could give. The day was too blue, 
too perfect, to let one rest at San Remo ; so off we went 
into the hills to a queer sort of out-of-the-way nook 
called Ceriana. Beneath us as we zigzagged up the hill- 
side lay the blue curve of the bay — so intensely blue, and 
the " ashy " heap of the town wedged among its olives. 
Then we rounded a headland and San Remo was lost, 
and through the lanes of Poggio (mere holes with arches 
overhead, stenches, and no daylight) we rattled out 
again into a great valley striking up into the very 
heart of the mountains, with huge bare sides fringed at 
the base with olives, and dotted thinly higher up with 
cypresses and firs. Our carriage delayed us and we 
crept slowly up the sides of the valley, but without 
much regret for lost time ; for in the very centre of it 
rose suddenly a great bluff of rock with a town on it, 
a white town all bright against the blue sky on this 
mass of yellowish gray rock, soft sandstone, and scored 
deep with gorges and ravines so that its buttresses 
spread out like huge claws over the bed of the valley. 
I can give no other comparison ; it was exactly like 
some monster beast of the olden world rising up from 
the river-bed and lifting the city up like a feather- 
weight on its back. And remember, city and rock 
were absolutely glowing with light so that (miles off 
as they were) it seemed as if one could have stretched 
out one's hand over the valley and touched every church 
and claw. We went on getting higher and higher along 
the hillside thick with myrtle and arbutus, till we felt 
the snow beneath our feet (such an odd sensation here), 
and the rocks grew white and bare ; and rounding a 
corner we saw Ceriana huddled against a hill-front in 
the great cul-de-sac of the gorge. 



28o LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Jan. 12. — The great charm of Ceriana lay in a real 
old church, with an exquisite campanile etched out 
against the snow of the hillside beyond, and untouched 
by " restoration." All the churches about here were 
converted into temples of stucco without and ochre 
within some 200 years ago, in the fervour of the 
"Catholic revival" under Carlo Borromeo. But I 
can't talk about churches just when the diligence has 
brought me Humphry Ward. 

To W, Boyd Dawkins 

San Remo, 
January 29, 1871. 

[Mr. Voysey was deprived of his living by a sentence 
of the Privy Council, February 11, 1871.] 

I suppose that your hard weather is over by this 
time, dear Dawkins, though you can hardly have 
attained to our spring weather here. January has been 
a fine month on the whole, but varied with a certain 
number of windy and rainy days. But this last fort- 
night the real spring weather of the Corniche has set in, 
— a sun hot and bright as English summer suns, and a 
great rush of wild flowers out along the hills. We have 
beds of narcissus and clusters of hyacinths just above 
our house here, and as one goes along the paths the 
odour of the violets strikes even upon my insensible 
nose. The difficulty of such weather is that it tempts 
me to do too much. Yesterday for instance I took 
four hours up the hill at a stretch. It was wonderful 
weather and the most delightful scenery in the world, — 
from one point, a promontory crowned with a white 
chapel of the Madonna, one looked down on two great 
bays of blue sea, just heaving with a summer swell and 
shimmering with colour, — then turning inland the eye 
struck up a wild valley with white little towns perched 
on the hillside to the distant mountains crowned with 
pure bright snow. But to-day I am paying for the de- 
light and the over-exertion. The truth is, my physical 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 281 

strength has shot on wonderfully but my lung lags be- 
hind. It will be a weary business ; but it is wonderful 
that I have got round so well as I have, and I mustn't 
grumble. Clark told me before I left England that I was 
going on so well now that I might as well know that 
when he first examined me more than a year ago, he 
didn't expect to pull me through at all. I am cheerful 
about myself, but I see how very cautious I shall have 
to be and that I must expect constant relapses. More- 
over it will be necessary, I fancy, for me to spend my 
winters out of England for some time yet. This is 
delightful enough, but destructive to " preferment " and 
that sort of thing, about which Tait is most kind and 
gracious. But till I have seen the Voysey judgment 
(of which I have been allowed to know only this that 
it is against him) I don't know whether it would be 
even possible for me to take preferment at all. 

The Archbishop and his folk have gone on to Men- 
tone, as this place was a Uttle too uphill for him, and 
without level paths. He is wonderfully better than in 
England, and illness seems to have brought out all the 
gentleness and kindness of his nature. Just before I 
left home he sent me, with the most charming letter in 
the world, a /50 note, — my best thanks, he said, would 
be to start at once. Here he and I had pleasant genial 
chats, which will always be a pleasant memory to me. 
Lady W. too who was with him was good fun, — a 
cheery old lady who was always pressing me to get 

married. Do you know the S s ? — the eldest son, 

the member for H., has been some weeks with his 
mother. He is a really good fellow, and strong in 
chemistry, etc., with just a little too much of " the 
Lobbv " in him as in most young M.P. 's. But of 
course the great thing in our winter-retreat is to avoid 
rather than court society, the mob of " poitrinaires" is 
simply boring and depressing, and our own little circle 
is quite enough for social enjoyment. 

I have just resumed work with the New Year and 
have sent in half-a-dozen articles to Harwood. I never 



282 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

felt in better intellectual trim, but here again I am 
obliged to be cautious, a day of over-writing knocks 
me up just as much as a day of over-walking. How 
one longs for the strength of old Freeman ! You have 
been stopping with him, — do write and tell me how 
he is. Oddly enough, after being my most constant 
correspondent, he has wholly deserted me since I came 
out here, only sending me a single letter the whole 
time. But even he seems to have found this winter 
too much for him. 

I shall stay in Italy till the end of May ; but my 
present notion is to leave San Remo about the middle of 
April, to loiter at Mentone, Monaco, Nice, and Cannes, 
and to spend May in Florence. It seems like a dream 
of delight being in this lovely Italy, and yet more being 
face to face with the city on the Arno, — the city one 
has read of and known of, but hardly hoped to see. If 
as I hope I see it this spring and Rome next autumn, 
I shall be a lucky fellow. How I wish I could see 
your dear old face again, Dax, and chat about the old 
days for an hour ! Our dreams are turning out realities, 
only the realities are stranger than our dreams. What 
a world of time that ten years seems to be since we 
paced the Quad in the moonlight, and talked wildly 
of the coming days ! 

Good-bye. Give my kindest regards to Mrs. 
Dawkins and your mother. Write soon, — and believe 
me ever yours, J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

Villa Congreve, San Remo, 
February 6, 1871. 

It was delightful to get your long letter, dear Free- 
man, and not less delightful to find that you, the most 
accurate of post-knowing people, put too wee a stamp 
on it. That franc shall be hurled at you whenever you 
taunt me with not knowing the exact charge for a letter 
to Masulipatam. Of course I bow and even prostrate 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 283 

myself before your "work," — when do you do it? — 
do you ever eat or sleep or chat? — write jolly letters I 
know you do, though rather few of them to some poor 
folk ! I hope Volume IV. will greet me on my return 
at the end of May. Stubbs's book is on the wing hither, 
— he sent me his blessing t'other day by Humphry 
Ward, but he will curse me when he reads the two 
papers on " Oxford and its Early History," which I 
am sending to Macmillan, whereof the thesis is twofold, 
(i) that the University killed the city, and (2) that 
the Church pretty well killed the University. I wrote 
them to pay my lodgings and washing bill, but I 
haven't scamped them, and I shall be curious to know 
what you think of them. 



I liked much your Pall Mall letter anent the Dutch- 
Welch war. As you say, I don't see the Republic. 
Gambetta is simply Imperialism over again in spite of 
Fred. Harrison's ravings. I can't tell you what a dis- 
appointment the crash of Republicanism in France has 
been to me; impossible as it is for us to sympathise 
with or be influenced by her, her influence over Spain 
and Italy is immense, and here especially I feel every 
day what an immense impulse towards good Italy might 
receive from a really liberal France. In a middle which 
I have been sending to Harwood I have pointed out 
the enormous amount of work Italy has really done 
and the amazingly short space of time she has done it 
in. Much of it is of course done badly, some altogether 
scamped, but the social and religious difficulties are too 
enormous to be realised, save by living in Italy itself 
All the women here, for instance, believe the drought 
and bad crops of the past seven years to be owing to 
the "persecution of the Pope." A sensible man owns 
to me that he looks on the inundation of Rome as 
Heaven's sign against its annexation to Italy. To have 
made Italy, in spite of all this, to have created an army 
and a navy, organised a system of popular education far 
superior to our own, carried out a great church reform, 



284 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

covered the country with railroads, etc., etc., in twenty 
years is (considering our rate of progress) something to 
be really proud of. The curse of Italy is its adminis- 
trative centralisation, and that is the gift of France. If 
a really free France were to decentralise, as to be really 
free she must, it would tell enormously here. But what 
hope is there of a free France ? 

(End missing.) 
To Miss L. von Glehn {Mrs. Creighton) 

Villa Congreve, San Remo, 
February 1 1 , 1 8 7 1 . 

I can't tell you with what delight I read all about 
your visit to King's Square. Is it not a dismal place 
and a dismal house ? And yet it is my Mecca. There 
is a room in that house which is more to me than any 
Holy Sepulchre — the room where I last saw and said 
" Good-bye " to the greatest and best person I have 
ever met, or shall ever meet, in this world. I said 
good-bye not doubting we should meet again, for she 
seemed getting better, and indeed I could not think it 
possible for her to die. And then two days after in a 
street at Oxford I got the telegram that she was dead. I 
remember that day so well ; it was Commemoration Day,, 
and the degree of D.C.L. was given to Lord Palmerston, 
and the Theatre was full of people shouting and cheer- 
ing ; and I came out of it all, and read that. It is all 
years ago, and yet infinitely more present to me than 
any present thing. I went before I left England to see 
her grave at Tooting. They are building fast all round, 
so that even in death she will lie in that hideous wilder- 
ness of brick and mortar that killed her ; for she longed 
for air and sunlight and the songs of birds. Ah, when 
I think of that freshness, that nobleness, wrought out 
in a hfe so hampered and bound down to the common- 
place, I turn angrily from all my moans, and other 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 285 

people's moans at their life rendering real greatness im- 
possible. 1 see people straining after power, longing 
to be able to influence and what not. 1 long to tell 
them, " There has been in my whole life among the 
thousands I have met one person, and one only, who 
has influenced ;;z^, before whom my whole soul bent in 
reverence and adoring love. And she was the quiet 
wife of an East-End parson, in a dingy London square, 
who would have laughed at the thought of ' influencing' 
anybody." 

[In a following passage, too intimate for publication, 
Green mentions a curious incident. One of Mr. Ward's 
daughters was a child of 3 or 4 years old when he went 
to her father's house meaning to refuse the curacy. The 
child " played with me and tied my leg to the table 
and said, ' Shan't go,' and half from sheer love to the 
child, and half from that strange feeling of fatalism 
which lies at the root of half my life, I said, * I will 
stay.' How diff^erent my life might have been but for 
little M. ! "] J. R. G. 

To Miss von Glehn 

Villa Congreve, San Remo, 
February 19, 1871. 

I have finished a sensational novel, I have seen a 
shoal of porpoises, and a double inspiration drives me 
to write to you, dear Olga. Which of the " me's " is 
writing now, the one you like or the one you hate, I 
can't say. Your letter made me doubt my own identity, 
and run off^ wildly to the Athanasian Creed to see if I 
couldn't do something to prevent this confounding the 
persons and dividing the substance. But nothing came 
of it. I begin to half believe in your theory of me — 
at any rate it explains a good deal. When I am enthusias- 
tic about something or somebody at dinner and bored by 
bedtime, or solemnly vow and promise on Monday and 
forget all about it on Tuesday, it is likely enough — 



286 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

now you suggest it — that it is the one " I " that deals 
in enthusiasm and promises, and the other that is bored 
and forgets. You too have an " I " that forgets. 
Didn't you promise and vow as soon as your " hand- 
some pay " arrove from New Caledonia to come and 
see me at San Remo, and carry my baggage for me 
instead of a donkey ^ Olga, you came not ! I dis- 
missed that donkey. I waited. Day after day, from 
morn to dewy eve, my eyes rested on that white road 
across the headland. But in vain ! At last I have 
resumed my donkey. Her name is not exactly Norval, 
but Roma. It is very like your own, which pains me. 
Never was such a moke ! She rushes at the steepest 
hillside and swims up it with an easy grace. She picks 
her way daintily down the stoniest ravines. She has a 
divine pitifulness over the weaknesses of humanity, and 
looked down on me with almost parental affection as I 
lay at her feet, grovelling in the dust, with one foot in 
the stirrup. Human thought and donkey-jumps don't 
harmonise, dear Olga, and I think now and then and 
now and then Roma jumps. Then from the dust I 
look up at her with one foot still in the stirrup, and 
that gentle eye of celestial pitifulness looks down on 
me. Ah, had I met with a sympathy like this earlier 
in life ! But we are all " blighted bein's " except 
Louise. What is that gay and festive young person 
doing at Oxford ? I hear of her flirting with susceptible 
Dons, sitting at the feet of Ruskin, and initiating the 
University into the mysteries of High Art ! One 
young tutor I know has abandoned his logic in 
despair, and moons about the Christ Church walls 
ejaculating, " Louise, wheeze, wheeze," in as poetic a 
way as his influenza will allow him. What privileges 
young Oxford has nowadays ! In my day no young 
maidens descended on our earthly sphere. 

But I am writing nonsense. The fact is, it is too 
sunny to write sense. Day after day there is the same 
blue sky, without a cloud, the same bright warm sun- 
shine, the same depth of colour over the sea, the very 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 287 

ground carpeted with violets and anemones. And all 
this sunshine is healthy as well as beautiful, and my 
chest is freer than it has ever been, and if I can only 
keep quiet and be sensible I may see a little more of 
life yet. . . . 

Good-bye, dear Olga ; write at once, for it is a 
while since I had any news from the Hill of Peak. 
All the Saints salute thee. Salute Mimi and Louise 
and the household generally. — Good-bye. J. R. G. 

To Miss L. von Glehn {Mrs. Cr eight on) 

Pension Geveran, Cannes, 
March 6, 1 87 1. 

[The struggle with the Commune began on March 
18, 1871.] 

I have been wondering at your long silence, dear 
Louise, and now I am only in wonder how you can 
have broken it. If I am ever engaged, my corre- 
spondents will have to give up all hopes of letters. 
I shall be wrapped in " dreamful ease " like the gods 
in Tithonus [the " Lotos Eaters "], and let the world 
go its way. Still I am delighted that you have written 
and that the news of your engagement should have 
reached me from yourself, for happy as I am about it 
— and indeed I am on all grounds most happy — there is 
always a shadow of dread about a friend's marriage, 
and I have too few real friends to care to lose one. 
But such a frank, warm-hearted note as yours dispels 
all dread. I feel that our friendship will remain just 
as warm and true as ever, although you will have some 
one else now to treat you to " wise conversation." 
Indeed, indeed, Louise, I rejoice in this happiness of 
yours. As you say, I have just seen Mr. Creighton, 
but he is a man one hears a good deal of and all one 
hears tends the same way. I have said hard things of 
" Young Oxford," and perhaps there are hard things 
to say ;. but no one can deny that there is a great 



288 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

deal of real nobleness and refinement of life about it. 
I have always heard Mr. Crelghton spoken of as the 
representative of its best side. He must be a man of 
singular power — his influence over Merton and at 
Oxford generally shows that — and for all moral 
qualities I am content with your own assurance. I 
know you could not love a man who was not noble 
in heart and soul. . . . As to waiting for marriage, 
marry poor ; have the pluck and faith in one another 
that people nowadays seem to me to want. I will 
excuse you the fees if I may marry you, but I know 
you will prefer the shiny curate and so my last clerical 
hope is gone ! 

I hope you are " Red " in your French sympathies 
and don't follow the Times and the English papers in 
their rabid attacks on Paris. Things have gone a long 
way beyond its original demands, but it is well to 
remember that these were simply for the self-govern- 
ment which every English town has. But Paris is 
more than an ordinary town — it is the seat of Govern- 
ment — and it has seen liberty overthrown again and 
again by administrative coups d'etat in its streets. It 
sees in its own National Guard, officered and com- 
manded by itself, an effective safeguard against coups 
d'etat^ and it sees no other. Had these demands been 
frankly granted instead of being played with and evaded 
all would have been well. As it is the city is driven 
to far larger demands. It seems unreasonable — it 
is perhaps — to demand urban independence. But 
for a quarter of a century the great French cities have 
been trodden under foot by the vast uneducated rural 
masses. Ought there not to be some security against 
this ? At any rate, is not this Paris a wonderful 
spectacle of a government of artisans, governing ably, 
preserving order, and with property and life as safe 
as in Regent Street ? And yet we howl day after day 
" anarchy and pillage " at it. It is time to say good- 
bye, dear Louise, and yet I can't say it without again 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 289 

telling you what joy this news of your happiness has 
given me. God bless you, and make you still happier 
in the days to come. 



To Miss von Glehn 

Villa Congreve, San Remo, 
March lo, 1 871. 

[Edward Lear (18 12-1888), the artist and author 
of the Book of Nonsense, was living at San Remo at this 
time.] 

Surely, dear Olga, you are the most abusive as you 
are the most entertaining of correspondents. You tell 
me that my letter " partakes of the nature of a por- 
poise," while yours always display that of "a sensa- 
tional novel." Certainly the "midnight flitting" at 
the close of your last had a sensational turn about it; 
Mr. Whistler should have painted that bread-and- 
butter spreading in the schoolroom with his usual 
" effects " in whites and grays. But I was most 
amused at the little Oxford Comedy, of which I got 
the other and more lachrymose side from H. W. the 
very day I received your news. Certainly L. made a 
wonderful splash, though she wouldn't think so much 
of Oxford splashes after a little experience of the 
place. The blase young Epicureans with red beards 
and gold eye-glasses are always looking out like the 
Athenians for "some new thing" to get "a rise out 
of life with." But the new thing never lasts a term ; 
and if L. were to try " the year at Oxford " they 
propose, she would see a good many successors in the 
lion department. Just now they prize her for a quality 
they have taken up lately as the sum and crown of 
things, her " perfect repose." Shall we two go down 
to the city of the Isis, and show them what " perfect 
repose" can be? No, we should laugh too much, and 
the young philosophers with eye-glasses only smile. 
They are exquisitely witty, and smile. Louise never 



290 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

liked our incessant joking, our utter want of serious- 

, ness, our frivolous aversion to earnest discussion. It 

} is when I see the young generation, Olga, that I thank 

the Gods I am old. The world seems to me to be 

going in for aesthetic boredom, and to be about to 

I expire in an elegant yawn. The one comfort is that 

?all the people one really believes in and cares about 

are as gay and " frivolous " as we are. Contrast the 

buoyant life of Mendelssohn's letters with the "perfect 

repose " of these Oxford philosophers ! 

Of course your mother will whistle Miss L.'s plans 
of " a year at Oxford " down the wind. No place 
takes the bloom off a girl so much. Nowhere is she 
so " played with," so amused, petted, and flung by. 
As to " studying " there are a thousandfold better lec- 
tures to be got in London than in Oxford, and the 
society of Peak Hill is of a healthier intellectual type, 
because of a far broader intellectual type, than that 
of the D.'s. Deutsch is a greater scholar, Haweis a 
greater wit, and George Grove a more accomplished 
person than any three men she could meet at Oxford, 
barring Max Miiller and one or two she isn't likely 
to have much to do with. As for the C.'s and fish of 
that kind, they are big fish in a little pond, but one 
has seen plenty of them shrink {illegible) when they 
have been plunged into the London " big water." . . . 
I have just been seeing Lear's pictures packed off 
for the Academy. I shall be home just in time for a 
visit to it with you — do you remember our visit last 
year ? One of the pictures hangs about me still, a 
quiet reach of the Nile all dead with evening, behind 
a fiery blaze of sunset, and in front of it the weird 
gigantic " wings " of a Nile boat — dark olive green 
in colour. There was a strange wild creepiness about 
the picture, but I doubt whether it will get hung. 
Lear has " Academy Wednesdays " in the studio of 
his new house, which he has hung round with lOO of 
his water-colours from Egypt, Palestine, Montenegro, 
Greece, Italy, and the Riviera. His whole fife seems 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 291 

to have been an artistic " Wanderjahr," and perhaps 
it is owing to this that he has preserved such perfect 
freshness of feeling, his humour and gaiety, his love 
of children and nonsense. He is delighted just now 
with the sale of his Christmas book, some 3000 copies 
have gone, but his profits are only some £,60 ! Still 
he is happy, and every day he comes in and chats and 
tells me of some new idea for a picture, or of some 
change in a picture we have seen. Surely nothing is so 
perfect, so self-sufficing as the artist-life. 

March 20 ! Is it possible this letter can still be 
here, .dear Olga, lurking in secret places, when I 
thought it resting next to your heart or buried under 
your pillow to woo sweet dreams ? What a change 
since I began it — Lear vanished and San Remo 
vanished, and around me instead of the soft circle of 
its olives the hard red line of the cliffs of Mentone ! 
I have written all about our travels to Mimi — at least 
I believe so, but I got into mysterious waters which 
floated off budgets of letters to the wrong people ; so 
I don't quite know what I have said to anybody. But 
I don't think I told her of a great find at Ventimiglia, 
a bleak city perched upon a bare hill at the mouth 
of the Roya, in the shape of a Church of San Michele 
almost wholly made up of bits of the old Roman 
city. Its apse was the original apse of a Roman 
basilica. Roman masonry was built into its walls, and 
its crypt was supported by Roman columns inscribed 
with the names of Augustus and the like. It made 
one realise Italy, for Italy is a mere converted Rome — 
a temple turned into a church — the Augustan name 
used to prop up a Crypt. 

I am going on well again, after a sad tumble back 
through the wild excitement into which I managed to 
work myself over the Voysey judgment. I tried so 
hard to convince the Liberals at home of the real 
importance of the decision, but they either cannot or 
will not see it, and 1 worked myself into a perfect 



292 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

passion of disappointment over their blindness till it 
told on my health and I fell back rapidly. I really 
didn't imagine I had so much interest in the " Liberal '* 
party left, and what there was is certainly effectually 
killed. The fact is that, as Francis Lord wrote to-day, 
there are but two Churches in the world, the Church 
of the Priest and the Church of the School-master ; 
the Church of Dogma and the Church of Science. 
Bodies like the Church of England may try to con- 
ciliate the two movements — at least portions of them 
may — but every day makes the task more impossible. 
One may ground one's "religion" — the moral tie, that 
is, that binds our life into unity of action and purpose 
— on " faith " or on " fact " — on the outer teaching of 
Church or Bible or Sect, or on the inner teaching of 
experiment and knowledge. But it is impossible to 
combine the two. Have you read, for instance, this 
new book of Darwin's on Man and his origin ? The 
two admirable reviews in the Saturday are all that I 
have seen as yet, but what wonderful vistas of inquiry 
and speculation the book must open. How in the 
presence of vast problems such as these all these 
Theological controversies shrink into littleness, into 
absolute unreality ! " Sacrifice," "Justification," " In- 
spiration " — all these things will seem to our children 
as absurd as Gnosticism or Transubstantiation seem to 
us. I don't say that a rational religion is impossible, 
on the contrary it seems to me possible now as it never 
has been, but we can only reach it by flinging to the 
owls and the bats these old and eflfete " Theologies " of 
the world's childhood. 

I daresay we shall find the summer agreeable 
enough, dear Olga, even if Mimi and Louise do flit 
away like the Ancient Mariner to the realms of 
frost and snow. I suppose they can't help it, and 
that they must have killed an albatross without know- 
ing it. I wonder whether Louise will find Riga as 
entertaining as Oxford ? Remember me kindly to her 
and all at Peak Hill, and thank Grove — when you see 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 293 

him — for his prompt compliance with my request 
about the money. Tell him it was for that landlady 
of mine in whose face he once detected " traces of 
hopeless passion." He at any rate removed the hope- 
lessness of her passion for the payment of her bill. 

Good-bye, write to me soon, I shall be at Cannes 
(Poste Restante) till April 15. J. R. G. 



To E. A. Freeman 

Mentone, 
March 20, 1871. 

You will see by this heading, dear Freeman, that we 
are no' longer at San Remo. It was very hard to leave 
the place ; it had done one so much good, and had so 
grown into our habit and life in the four months we 
spent there that it seems odd to say good-bye to it. 
However my friends wished to move, and even I began 
to long for a rather more bracing atmosphere such as 
one can get at Cannes ; so we have begun our joggings 
along the coast. All our Florentine plans, as I think I 
told you, have been changed, and now that France is 
open we fall back on our old Proven9al projects and 
intend to move homewards by Avignon, Aries, and the 
like. Our first halt was at Bordighera, a place the very 
opposite to San Remo in its character, with a vast out- 
look along the coast, bay after bay, promontory after 
promontory, till in the sunset one sees the pale ghost- 
like shadows of the Estrelles above Cannes. It was like 
the great world opening on us again after our months 
of isolation in that little San Remese world of its own. 
Bordighera's great boast is the palm ; there is one great 
garden with hundreds of them, which looked magnificent 
as they tossed their huge fronds in the wind. To us 
its hotel was the most entertaining feature of it ; an 
" Evangelical " hotel much frequented by Exeter Hall 
folk, its hall decorated with exhortations to observe " the 
Sabbath," its library full of tracts and books of piety 
instead of the usual French novels, cards with " Gospel 



294 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Charades " scattered over the tables of its Salon, its 
master himself a minister of the Swiss Protestant sort, 
and profuse with offers of " privileges " in the shape of 
" family prayers." It was wonderfully amusing, and 
fortunately accompanied by a capital cuisine, as is the 
case in other Evangelical houses I have known. There 
was a little kidnapping establishment, too, in the neigh- 
bourhood, where a Mrs. Boyce entraps little Roman 
Catholic orphans and turns them into little Protestant 
Mortaras.^ Is not the earth full of the praises of Exeter 
Hall, and does it not recall the analogous efforts of 
certain folk 1800 years ago who compassed sea and 
land to make proselytes with somewhat peculiar results ? 
One of the most disappointing features of this Riviera 
is the universal " restoration " of its churches. It seems 
to have been greatly stirred by the revival of Catholicism 
under the Borromeos of Milan in the sixteenth century, 
and hardly a church has escaped the transformation into 
a stucco temple. It was a great delight to find some 
spared at Ventimiglia — not " Twenty-mile-ia " as we 
christened it, but the old capital of the Intimiglii, the 
coast-tribe of the Ligurians here — which luckily lies on 
a bleak hill summit dreaded by tourists and modern 
" colonies " at the mouth of the Roya. The cathedral 
turned out to be a fine twelfth century church, curiously 
like S. Stephen's, Caen, in the arrangement of its in- 
terior ; but S. Michele, a far older church, was actually 
built on to the apse of a real Roman basilica and its 
under-crypt was supported on Roman columns covered 
with inscriptions to Augustus and other folk. I sup- 
pose we shall think nothing of these small matters when 
we get to Nismes, but after dwelling in the tents of 
Meschech for so long we gave a good jump at getting 
hold of the Romans again. In England I always kicked 
at them as somehow anachronisms and confusions, and 
I remember at Leeds raving against the people who 
pottered over Roman roads, but here they have a 
reality ; in fact Rome underlies everything here, and 

1 Mortara was the Jewish boy claimed by Catholic priests at Bologna in 1858. 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 295 

the very Middle Ages were mere travesties of its 
institutions. 

I suppose by your talk of" proofs " that Volume IV. 
will meet me on my return in May. It will be a pleas- 
ant welcome home, and will harmonise queerly with the 
other William's Conquest from among the traces of 
which I shall have come. As you say, I abode Dutch, 
and that with the more comfort as the majority of 
Englishmen turned more and more unto the Welchry. 
At the beginning of the war I was uncomfortable, for I 
had never been in the majority before, and it made me 
feel as if something was wrong. But when even the 
Daily. News turned unto Parisian sentiment I regained 
all my equanimity. I hope when I die they won't 
mock a consistent " life in opposition " by engraving on 
my tomb abiit ad plures. Concerning Voysey I won't 
write a word in spite of your challenge. The whole 
thing, the cowardice especially of the Liberal clergy, 
and the excitement of trying and trying in vain to 
prod them into action against a judgment which really 
smites not Voysey but them, made me fall back again 
into coughing and even worse things. I suppose if I 
had died from loss of blood, somebody in Convocation 
would have said I had died the death of Arius. Well 
— one might do worse. One might die the death of 
the men who rejoiced in the death of Arius. But da 
you really think (for your Toryism in ecclesiastical 
matters a bit astounds me) that a Church can be in a 
good way whose narrowness makes it impossible not 
merely for George Cox, but for me, to work in her pale ? 
I don't say what my future course may be ; but if I do 
return to clerical work it will be simply with the very 
design you censure in Voysey — to force the Church of 
England either into open accordance with, or into open 
opposition to, the conclusions of reason, of science, and 
of historical criticism. 

When I get back I shall have a great deal of work 
to do and if I run about it must be with a work-basket 
at my tail. But I am pretty sure to visit Somerleaze, 



296 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

and if the Historical Section (at where ?) is possible I 
will strive to see thee in thy glory. Roaming through 
these little Ligurian towns makes me utter just the old 
groans you used to join in when we roamed about 
France, — groans, I mean, over the state of our local 
histories in England. There isn't one of these wee 
places that glimmer in the night like fireflies in the 
depth of their bays that hasn't a full and generally ad- 
mirable account of itself and its doings. They are 
sometimes wooden enough in point of style and the like, 
but they use their archives, and don't omit, as all our 
local historians seem to make a point of doing, the 
history of the town itself. I have made a little begin- 
ning for that of Oxford in the first paper I sent to 
George Grove ; but clearly the first part of such work, 
the printing and sifting materials, falls properly to the 
local antiquary, and I can't suggest a better subject for 
your inaugural speech as President than the enforcing 
this on the class. Of course where cities were states, 
and the least of these little places was a state, their 
history must be of very diiferent interest from that of 
English towns ; and here, too, the history of them all 
falls into a certain unity from their relation to Genoa, 
on which I spoke a little in the case of San Remo. 
Sometimes the relation takes odd forms ; here, for 
instance, at Mentone we have citizens of Genoa, the 
Grimaldi, settling down into feudal lords of Genoese 
dependencies and warring with other Genoese citizens 
who have become feudal lords elsewhere, as the Dorias 
at Dolceacqua, while both lords would still vote side 
by side as fellow-burghers at Genoa. It recalls Milti- 
ades and the like. 

Good-bye, — it is time to go to bed, and you know 
that that law is of the Medo-Persic order now. Re- 
member me to all those that care for me. J. R. G. 

I shall be at Cannes till the 1 5th of April, — let me 
have a line there. 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 297 

To E. A. Freeman 

Cannes, 
April 14, 1871. 

[Mr. Goschen's " Local Government Bill," which 
proposed to make the parish the unit of local adminis- 
tration, failed to reach a second reading.] 

I have picked out a good pen this time for you, 
fastidious man, at whose own writing compositors faint 
in horror ! However your letter was readable enough 
and full of good news, especially anent next autumn 
and Ravenna. I have been grumbling much at the fate 
which seems always to stand between me and the 
Exarchate, but clearly the Destinies meant me to go as 
Bryce's tail, which is seemly and right. You see I 
haven't got far over the Var, or into Provence, — for 
this Cannes is not so much Provincia Romana as Pro- 
vincia Britannica or Broughamannica; its centre being 
" Le Squar de Lordbrougham," and its shrine his 
tomb, whereon is written a verse of " his Lordship's 
favourite hymn." Tait, whom I caught up here, tells 
me that hymns were Brougham's last mania, and that 
one couldn't find " new collections " fast enough for 
him. I wonder whether in your old age I shall have a 
difficulty in finding you new Tuppers. It is a delight- 
ful place, the more delightful from its contrast with our 
other resting-places along the Riviera, — one's feet are 
set in a large room here, and instead of the mountain- 
heights pressing you into the sea as at Mentone, you 
get a wide tumbled landscape with distances full of 
delicious colouring and gorgeous sunsets over the 
Estrelles. The great product of the place is Frogs, 
Aristophanic frogs, who be green and live in trees. 
Soon as the evening shades prevail these frogs take up 
their wondrous tale, and a noise like twenty saw-mills 
banishes sleep, — my sleep, that is, for I suppose neither 
frogs nor saw-mills make much difference to you. 

We have been dawdling here waiting for Marseilles 



298 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

to be quiet. Most of the fighting there is done at the 
station, the station-master is shot alternately by the 
troops and the Commune, and all luggage is converted 
into barricades. I feel with you about the murders in 
Paris, — but they were done by troops which had 
mutinied, not National Guards, and before the Com- 
mittee had been able to seize the reins. Nothing is, I 
think, more wonderful than the order of Paris now. 
They do not even exact retribution for the horrible 
court-martial massacres at Versailles. I do wish you 
would attack "military justice" and "drum-head 
courts " ; they are mere inventions of red-coats for 
murdering under forms of law. Just read in Kaye's 
second volume of The Sepoy Mutiny what went on in 
I ndia. The municipal demands of Paris are undoubtedly 
just ; but Thiers, who is and always has been the ruin 
of France, hates municipal freedom, and has just coerced 
the assembly into refusing the free election of maires to 
all towns over 6500 inhabitants. As to the Communal 
demands of Paris, their fault is not, as the Times says, 
that they are mediaeval and obsolete, but that they are 
before their day. When we have got a real European 
commonwealth of nations, we can give far more inde- 
pendence to the separate bodies which make up each 
nation. But this is a big subject. 

Right in the centre of the bay of Cannes lie two 
islands, one of which I sailed to yesterday, the site 
of S. Honorat. One knows it better as the Abbey of 
Lerins, the first settlement by which the monasticism of 
the East penetrated into the West, the house which is 
to France or rather to Gaul, what Fulda was to Ger- 
many, or Monte Cassino to Italy. Patrick was trained 
there for his mission in Ireland ; and it is at Lerins one 
finds, I think, the key to the peculiar character of the 
monasticism he introduced there, — and so to some of 
the most salient features of Celtic Christianity. In 
situation and influence it is very like lona ; it for a cen- 
tury gave bishops to nearly all the sees of Southern 
France, as Hii did to Northumbria, and was like it too 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 299 

a great literary centre. Do you remember how In our 
High Church days we used to spout the rule of Vincent 
of Lerins : ^od ubiqucy quod semper ^ quod ab omnibus , 
— which in these later days seems to me a rule for 
nothing but Unitarianism ? I found far more than I 
had expected remaining ; a real relic of the old Lerins 
in the shape of a sixth century cloister, with a semi- 
circular vaulting, and the oddest way of getting round 
the corners of it I ever saw. It was in perfect preser- 
vation, I suppose from its massive character, as most 
of the later work has been swept away. However 
there is the shell of a fine twelfth century Church, and 
a " fortified abbey," the only one I ever saw. The 
freebooters, Saracens, Genoese, Catalans, and what not 
were always swooping down on the place, so in the 
eleventh century the monks got tired of being massacred, 
and set about building this castle with machicolations 
and drawbridges and what not, while within it was a 
monastery with cells and chapels ! I think Henry of 
Blois " semi-miles, semi-monachus " ought to have been 
Abbot of Lerins. Yet more curious were the " seven 
chapels " round the island, of which most remain, — as 
simple and as old as you like. Did you ever get to 
Glendalough and its Seven Churches ? I have always 
longed to go there since Goldwin Smith's weird picture 
of it in his Irish History. 

We start on Monday for Aries, Nismes, and Avignon ; 
after that our course must depend on the political look 
of things. I should greatly like a look at Paris, but I 
mustn't risk anything ; a night in the open air or in a 
cold cell would do me more certain harm than a gun- 
shot on a barricade. I am afraid you will find me just 
as great a prisoner at sunset when I come to Somerleaze 
as ever ; indeed, I shall only come when I heaj* that you 
are ready to change your hour for exercise and to walk 
when I can go with you and not when I can't. Car- 
diff is a place I see no reason whatever for visiting. I 
should have liked to see you enthroned ; but Welch- 
land is abhorrent to me, and South Welch-land most 



300 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

of all. As to Welch history I used to dabble in Celtic 
things long ago, but now one sees what far more inter- 
esting fields there are — especially in Italy — I don't 
feel disposed to bother myself about those lying and 
unbreeched barbarians. Moreover, the Institute is a 
great waste of time, and its {illegible) and rushing about 
would never do for me now. As to Little Book, I 
hope to make that my special work in England, and 
if possible to get the MS. into Macmillan's hands 
before starting again for Italy. Then I could give my 
winter at San Remo or Mentone to the Angevins. 
But my next year in England must go to Dunstan, 
which must be done, and which I can only do at British 
Museum, save the MS. at Arras. I shall be able to 
gain time now by the quiet and seclusion which my 
health renders absolutely necessary, and so after all my 
illness may be some good to me. . . . 

I am glad you are looking into Goschen's bill. It 
certainly seems to me the most masterly piece of legisla- 
tion we have had for half a century, and, coupled with 
Bruce's licensing bill, to entitle Gladstone's Government 
to great gratitude. The point which it will probably 
have to be modified on is its choice of the parish as the 
administrative unit, and yet Goschen's reasons against 
the only other alternative, the choice of the union, 
struck me as strong. But it is obviously inconvenient 
that the union should be the unit for one purpose — 
that of health — as well as now for pauperism — and 
the parish for all others. Moreover, so restricted a 
constituency as the parish would still give their suprem- 
acy to the squires, though their position as delegates 
would be itself a great change. The consoHdation of 
rates is an unmixed good — so too is the change in the 
incidence of rating. In reality the bill is not an ad- 
ministrative reform, it is a social revolution. That is 
why I am so glad of it. Socially I look upon Eng- 
land as wholly feudal and barbarous. When I see 
your Somerset peasantry trembling before your county 
magistrates, I thrill with anger. 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 301 

Good-bye. I hope to be in England in a month's 
time, and talk with you over this and many things. 
Remember me kindly to every one, especially Cox if he 
is at your house. 

Do you know you sent a great flush up into these 
cheeks of mine by your words about " towns." — Ever 
yours, dear Freeman, J. R. G. 

Sunshine 104 Fahrenheit, 

To E. A. Freeman 

4 Beaumont Street, W., 
(1871). 

My dear Freeman — I really thought I had written 
much to you about the sheets of Volume IV.; but I 
suppose I had got muddled by the two reviews of it I 
forwarded to Harwood some time ago. Its, points seem 
to me to be the really wonderful way in which you 
have worked in your local and archaeological sketches 
of the various towns (re-creating, in fact, by means of 
them, William's Campaigns in Mid-England), and the 
use you have made of Domesday. I had certainly no 
notion of the wealth of personal and private informa- 
tion which could be, and now is, got out of it. Of 
course I regret the absence of the pigs on whom and 
other beasties the Commissioners spent so much time 
and trouble. But I suppose there will be a special Pig- 
chapter in Volume V. Then too I think the constitu- 
tional part is excellent. I only wish it wasn't scattered 
up and down, but gathered together in a distinct part 
like as in Volume I. I wish in future editions of the 
Godwine and Harold time you would point out the 
modifications which the constitution was undergoing 
during that period. It seems to me to be a great 
omission at present, and it is really needed for the full 
understanding of Billy's doings. Naturally I enjoyed 
the ecclesiastical part a great lot, especially that really 
glorious covenant between Wulfstan and certain Norman 



302 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

and English Abbots. But I wish your Church wasn't 
so Bishopy ; there be priests, deacons, and lay people 
besides, you know. The weak point seems to me to 
be William hisself. You admire him and all that, but 
you don't quite like him, and you are uncommon glad 
when he gets a whipping. One great source of interest 
in this volume lies in its keeping pretty much at home ; 
the others go on two legs, Norman and English, and 
one gets a bit bothered at constant transportations. I 
fancy 1 feel a touch of fatigue in your style ; fat volumes 
will tire one, even if one is an E. A. F. But there is 
only one bit of writing against which I protest by all 
the gods, and that is the account of and meditation 
upon Billy's Death. There is a sort of undertaker- 
solemnity about it that I cannot away with. Orderic and 
Huntingdon always mouth on occasions of this sort, and 
I fancy they have beguiled you in the matter of Billy. 

But here I am writing chaff and I know not what 
to you, when you have a hostage in your hands in the 
shape of my little chapter to work your wicked will on 
in revenge. Stubbs sends it back with a " very pretty " 
verdict, which nearly made me tear my hair. I will 
annoy him in Chapter III. by praising "Documents" 
yet more and more. I have just left " Dokkyments " 
to plunge into Ed. II., and I feel like a man lost. I 
think I shall simply say that " all further remarks on 
the English Constitution are adjourned till Mr. Stubbs 
issues more docyments." 

Do send me the sheets of Historical Essays. If you 
wish me to review them, I will write to Harwood and 
see whether he is willin'. Let me have Chapter II. 
back as soon as you can. — Ever yours, dear Freeman, 

J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

4 Beaumont Street, W., 
June 27, 1 87 1. 

[This refers to the series called the Historical Course 
for Schools, of which the first, called A General Sketch 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 



303 



cf European History^ by Freeman, appeared in 1872. 
Pearson is Mr. C. H. Pearson, author of National 
Character i who went to Austraha in 1871.] 

Dear E. A. F. — I will wipe away the tears from 
the Cocceian eyes, but what tearful eyes they be ! 
" If you can run down on Saturday I shall be there 
with a Gig " is surely not a very elaborate invitation — 
still I ought to have answered it, but the sunlessness 
and the east wind are responsible for my misdemean- 
ours. I don't think I was meant for this great-coat- 
and-perpetual-respirator-country ; at any rate my 
temper in correspondence improves considerably by 
crossing the Alps. But what would Cox do on the 
Riviera where there is sunshine and no Longman, 
neither folk that answer not letters, neither folk that 
groan ? 

Concerning the Libels (for I reserve the word " little 
book" for mine own). Yours first. The opening — 
all about the Rums and the other folk — is in your 
best style, and fairly within a boy or girl's comprehen- 
sion — interesting too, and quite readable. I like it 
as well as 1 like anything you ever did. Concerning 
Hellas and the Rums, I am not quite so happy. 
The " facts " are there, and the " dates " are there, 
but the history isn't. When I was a boy I was as 
" historical " as most boys, more so than most perhaps, 
but writing of this sort used simply to paralyse me. 
I never could learn it, and I think from all I have seen 
it is this sort of dry rattle of names and dates that 
sets boys against history. Moreover isn't it beginning 
at the wrong end, and would it not have been better 
to have gone on in the style of the opening, to have 
said simply what Hellas and what Rome was to give 
to the modern world, and then with as few names and 
dates as possible to have shown how they give it — 
Hellas, free manhood, literature, art, etc., Rome, the 
city, law, government, humanity, etc. ? All this in the 
talkee-talkee style of the opening, and avowedly 



304 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

taking this earlier history as a preface to the histories 
that follow. 

As a summary of facts the Rum part (not (I think) 
the Hellenic) strikes me as excellent. Supposing it to 
remain in the present form, I would strike out one or 
two things not absolutely bearing on the general 
history, such as the " Agrarian rows," and the plebeian 
origin of part of the noblesse. But you will see this 
yourself in the proof which I send you. . . . 

[Another volume] is terribly dry and dull just because 
it leaves out all that is really interesting in the Georgian 
history. Where is a word about John Howard or 
prison reform, or the Wesleyan movement, or the 
discoveries of Captain Cook, or Brindley's canals, or 
Watt's steam engine, or the revival of art under 
Reynolds and Gainsborough, or that of poetry under 
Burns and Wordsworth, or the colonisation of Australia, 
etc., etc., etc. .? " No room," says G. But she finds 
room for all the petty changes in the Georgian 
Ministers, and such facts as the change in the " royal 
style." I do think what we want in history i? to 
know which are the big facts and which the little ones. 
I am afraid you are making all your Harem tithe 
mint, anise, and cumin, and neglect the weightier 
matters of the law. I bear in mind what you urged 
ably in the Saturday Review some time since about 
history having to deal primarily with the political 
developement of society ; but then it must be at times 
when this political developement comes to the front. 
Now in the Georgian times it retires to the rear, and 
social developement occupies the front of the stage. 

At any rate there it is, a capital piece of work done 
by a clever woman, and as dull as an old almanack 1 
I daresay governesses will find it " useful," but it will 
set every child against a study so absolutely without 
human interest. 

Whereon I am " Jack." No, but I wish well to 
the little fleet of paper-boats, and I think a clever girl 
like this would do better if you left her a bit alone. 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 



3^5 



and didn't keep her nose down to the political 
grindstone. 

Pearson has fled to Australia, and Bryce is seeking 
one to succeed him at Trinity College, Cambridge, as 
Historical Lecturer. My winter abroad makes it 
impossible for me. Likewise I have refused the living 
of Witham Priory in your neighbourhood in spite of 
the attractions of Bp. Hugh. The " Grote " was in 
your best form, but what the sentence about Shilleto 
was before it was watered down fancy can't imagine. 
Most folk would be satisfied with pounding a man in 
a mortar without moaning that they couldn't disembowel 
him beforehand. 

Good-bye. — Ever yours, J. R. G. 

P.S. — I showed your little things to Bryce this 
morning. He said one noteworthy thing — that these 
little things must be done by big people — that they are 
the most difficult things of all to do, and that till big 
people can find time to do them they had better wait. 
" We have enough bad work already." In the main 
he would go with what I say about introductory books 
altogether, viz., that the ideas should be taught first, 
and the skeleton of facts and dates afterwards. 

To E. A. Freeman 

Rev. W. Loftie, Sevenoaks, Kent, 
September 1871 ? 

. . . When is Volume IV. to be out? I hoped to 
have had it for review before I left England. I have 
been thinking of late how to hitch on my book to 
yours, if ever it gets written, and have growled much 
at your going on to Billy's death when you ought to 
have ended with the close of the actual conquest. 
Then I could have gone on with England under Foreign 
Kings straight from the Conquest. Billy's death is no 
end or beginning of anything except Billy on earth, 
and (in the latter case, I hope) Billy in Heaven. I 



3o6 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

read very carefully through the MSS. of Palgrave's 
Henry I. and Stephen, which Frank Palgrave lent me ; 
the Henry is very fine, and the close of the Stephen 
masterly. But even if F. P. prints them as he pro- 
poses, there is so much constitutional and social work 
to do in the period that I don't think it would be 
wrong to stick to my original plan. Little Book goes 
on very slowly, I am only at the end of Cap. 3, i.e. 
at Evesham. It is in fact, done as I am doing it, very 
hard and bothering work, and involves (especially in 
the Literature parts) a good deal of fresh reading. 
Still I think you will like it as it goes on. 

I hope you will read a little paper on Edward 
Denison I have sent to Macmillan — it will tell you 
something of my old Stepney work and parish life, 
which few but you ever had a glimpse of. I often 
think how people would stare if they knew the real 
story of those ten East-end years of mine, their good 
side as well as their bad side. Denison was one of the 
most beautiful characters I ever met, and what I wrote 
about him I wrote from my heart. . . . 

Do you know this place at all ? To the world it is 
Sevenoaks, to me it is Knole. I wander about the 
grand old park with Archbishop Bourchier's gray old 
house looking out from among the trees. What 
sumptuous folk Archbishops were in those days ! Knole 
is big enough for a couple of noblemen, and yet only 
four miles off stood their house of Otford, which 
seems to have been yet grander. But Otford has 
dwindled into a pig-stye, while Knole abideth. 

Good-bye. I will do what I can to wipe the tears 
frorn eyes Stubbeian and Cocceian. — Ever yours, 

J. R. Green. 

To Miss von Glehn 

Genoa, 

October 30, 1871. 

... I am resting here for a quiet day after a 
month's sight-seeing (I left England on the 4th of 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 307 

October) on the first wet day which gives one a chance 
of rest. My journey has been a delightful one. We 
jogged slowly down the Rhine, stopping at Aachen, 
Koln, and Maintz, then struck across Germany, and 
spent a quiet Sunday at Wurtzburg, and then pushed 
over the Brenner to my old pet place Verona. Half 
my weakness and bad spirits took wings and fled 
away as I basked in the sunshine on the thymy hills 
looking high over the valley of the Adige, while my 
companion, Freeman, was working away at his drawings 
below. The delicious sunshine followed us every- 
where, to Venice where I spent three days in utter 
idlesse on the Grand Canal, seeing Murano — the one 
great 'thing I omitted when I was there two years ago — 
to Padua where I found the Arena chapel in its little 
vineyard, and lost my heart to Giotto, to Bologna 
where I " did hospital " for a couple of days before 
visiting Ravenna. Ravenna wants a letter all to itself; 
conceive a town where every great monument is 
(literally) as old as Hengest, where the tomb of 
Theodoric stands untouched with the great cope of a 
single stone as he left it thirteen centuries ago, and 
where great churches with bright mosaics stretching 
along their walls from west to eastern end, stand for- 
gotten — as it were — in the gray marshes only bounded 
by the pine-forest and the sea. Florence, with its life, 
its gaiety, its art, was a wonderful change after the 
death of Ravenna. I spent four days alone there (for 
Freeman despiseth " picters " ), if to be in a place 
where one knew of old every street and piazza, where 
every stone was pregnant with memories, where house 
and gallery and dome brought closer to one, and made 
living for one, such names as Dante, Savonarola, 
Michael Angelo, Giotto, could be said to be " being 
alone." There I stood once more in a region of the 
past, loitered for a day in the Campo Santo at Pisa, 
rode yesterday through the grand mountain scenery of 
the Spezzia coast, and am resting, weary, but delighted, 
here to-day. To-morrow I hope to be at San Remo. 



3o8 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

I left England suddenly, — a month before I had 
intended, — but my health broke down with the hard 
weather, and there was nothing for it but sudden flight. 
I bade " Good-bye " to nobody, and so I fear I am in 
many bad books in England. But I hope it is not so 
at Peak Hill. I shall be very lonely this winter at San 
Remo, and have a great deal of hard work to do, so 
" the Sisters of Mercy " at Sydenham must spare me a 
word of comfort now and again. When does Louise 
get married ? I spent a charming fortnight with 
Humphry Ward and Mary Arnold in Wales. She is 
to me the Queen of Women, — absolutely faultless. 
How delightful it is that the boy I love best in the 
world should have such a wife. Good-bye. Give my 
kindest regards to your mother and all at home, and 
believe me ever affectionately yours, J. R. G. 



To E. A. Freeman 

Villa Congreve, San Remo, 
November ij , 1871. 

You certainly had a good time of it, dear Freeman, 
after our parting, what with your peeps at Italian 
"Johnny-houses," your cHmb of the S. Gotthard, and 
your federalising at Berne. I for one didn't forget, in my 
admiration of " the walls of the eternal democracy," the 
democracy itself; I hardly remember any impression 
more profound than that which I received from that 
wonderful lake in its wonderful setting of mountains. 
I remember the Brookes laughing good-humouredly at 
my enthusiasm over the temple that nature itself seems 
to have built there to Freedom. But I don't feel that 
my love for freedom clashes with my love for Italy, or 
that one's interest in liberty need sleep on this side of 
the Alps to wake so strenuously on the other. The 
Piazza at Florence gave me the same thrill that I re- 
member on the Lake of Lucerne : — I am afraid an even 
more delightful thrill, for after all Swiss democracy is a 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 309 

democracy of institutions, we admire its constitution, its 
landesgemeinde and the like, but Florentine democracy 
was a democracy of men. Teutonic freedom is too 
often a development of man on one side only, the 
political, while Italian was (I feel all the answer that 
lies in that " was ") a development of the whole man, 
— political, intellectual, religious, artistic. 

I own that your indifference to all that free life of 
Italy jarred on me through that pleasant tour of ours ; 
I felt as you feel when Harry Jones and the Alpine 
Club turn Switzerland into a " Playground." You 
seemed to me to turn Italy into an Architectural Insti- 
tute. Of course you went solely for the purpose of 
" doing one thing," as they go to Berne for the pur- 
pose of " doing one thing," and of course there is a 
good deal of truth in the excuse in either case. But 
still in either case there is just that little "jar " of which 
I spoke. And this was certainly not lessened when I 
found that with all your architectural devotion you 
could still find room for enthusiasm whenever an 
Emperor came on the stage. There was no indiffer- 
ence when you stood before the figure of Frederick or 
the tomb of Henry. It was only when you stood 
before some memorial of the people that you took 
refuge in your sketching book. And yet to my mind 
a crowd of Florentines shouting themselves hoarse on 
their Piazza are a greater and a nobler thing than all 
the Emperors that ever breathed. 

But this is a poor return for all your jolly talk about 
Referendums and Volks-initiative, — the last of which I 
don't quite understand, so when you write again give 
me a little preachment anent it. I remember too in 
our chat before parting talking with you about these 
municipal matters. If you have picked up anything 
about them in such matters, for instance, as the restric- 
tion on right of citizenship and the sharing of municipal 
property, give me a little of it. When I was at Basel 
I missed the Library, but I saw one charming book, the 
very copy of The Praise of Folly which Erasmus lent to 



3IO LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Holbein, and on the margin of which, opposite a de- 
scription of" the ragged mendicant scholar," the painter 
maliciously sketched the portrait of Erasmus. Where- 
upon Erasmus turns to a description of " the drunken 
profligate" and just jots opposite it Holbeinus ipse. I 
should like to have seen those names of the English 
scholars there. I daresay you have seen (if not, get it 
sometime) that curious book The Troubles of Frankfort^ 
that gives their own account of all their sojournings 
and quarrellings in their exile, and their very various 
receptions at the very various Swiss towns. 

As to the dates of S. Ambrose at Milan there is a 
great muddle in Murray, but Hemans in his History of 
Medieval Christianity and Sacred Art has taken a great 
deal of pains to get at the truth in these matters, and 
what he says is mainly this. First, there was a certain 
Faustine Basilica which was incorporated into the 
Church built by S. Ambrose as the Chapel of S. Satiro 
(on south side of the Choir) and which still exists with 
mosaics of the sixth century in its apse. Secondly came 
the Church of S. Ambrose. This was thoroughly de- 
cayed when (868) Archbishop Anspert restored it ; and 
Anspert's basilica " had become so ruinous by 1 169 that 
another restoration, almost a rebuilding, became nec- 
essary," that of Archbishop Galdinus. To this last 
" belong the fa9ade with one of the lofty quadrati cam- 
panili flanking it, the acute arches under the roof, and 
the entire vaulting ; " to the ninth century Church be- 
long " the quadrangular atrium, the bronze portals, one 
of the two campanili, and perhaps the principal portion 
of the double colonnade between nave and aisles, with 
gallery destined for females, according to ancient ar- 
rangement, besides the crypt (modernised indeed, and 
with new pillars), the massive baldachino with porphyry 
columns over the high altar, and the apse with its 
mosaics of Byzantine art." 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 311 



To Miss Arnold {Mrs. Humphry Ward) 

Villa Congreve, S. Remo, 
December 19, 1871. 

Your letter, delightful as it was, made me feel very 
guilty — guilty that is of chaining you to a " long table" 
and an " empty room," when instead of letter-writing 
you ought to have been skating, lounging, chatting, or 
love-making. I want to make a solemn covenant with 
you, with only one clause in it, that whenever you are 
tired or unwell, or in any way disinclined to write, you 
will believe that I am infinitely happier in the feeling 
that you are resting or amusing yourself than even in 
your letters. . . . 

I am glad the Prince is better, if only that his recovery 
will deliver us from a deluge of that domestic loyalty 
which believes the whole question of republicanism 
solved by the statement that the Queen is an admirable 
mother and that her son has an attack of typhoid. 
I am sorry when any young fellow dies at thirty, 
and far more sorry when any mother suffers ; but 
the sentiment of newspapers and town councils over 
" telegrams from the sick-bed " is simply ludicrous. 
However, one remembers that all France went mad 
with anxiety when Lewis the well-beloved fell sick in 
his earlier days, and yet somehow or other '89 came 
never the later. But I have one little prayer to make 
even to you ; it is apropos of Rossel. I want you to 
substitute Delescluze in your sympathy for that heroic 
young Protestant. There is but one defence for a man 
who fights for the Commune — it is that he believes in 
it. But Rossel boasts that he was never a Communist. 
According to his own account he was only a hysterical 
young patriot of the Gambetta school, who was deter- 
mined to fight the Prussians, and if not the Prussians 
anybody who stood in the way of his fighting them. 
I own I think a drumhead court-martial an admirable 
sedative for hysteria of this sort. But then, you know. 



312 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

I am a Communist, and people like old Delescluze are 
more to my taste — men who believe (rightly or wrongly) 
and cling to their faith through thirteen years of the 
hulks and Cayenne, who get their chance at last — fight, 
work, and then when all is over know how to die, 
not " with a Protestant minister in attendance " and 
a carefully-written "journal of my last moments " 
on the table, but with that gray head bared, and 
the old threadbare coat thrown open, as Delescluze 
walked quietly and without a word up to the fatal 
barricade. 

I don't think I envy you even Worcester Pond and 
the claret cup. If I envy you anything it is the " gulph 
between," the thoughts of which struck you there. I 
sit sometimes alone here looking out over the sea, and 
I imagine such a gulph in one's life with a "Vita 
Nuova" on the other side of it. But it must always 
be a dream with me. Isn't it very odd to conceive of 
life without the hope of wife or child, or the stress of 
public effort or ambition, or any real faith in a here- 
after ? That is my life, and to me it seems about as 
interesting and picturesque as that of a " heathen 
Chinee." " Your business is to exist," says Clark, and 
so I suppose I shall go on " existing " till the boredom 

of it becomes too great and ; but I am talking 

great nonsense, when I meant instead of all this egotism 
to be telling you of a little water-colour I have just 
bought from Mr. Lear, and am sending home to you 
to fill up some little nook in the aesthetic drawing-room. 
It is a sketch of Crete, with Mount Ida in the distance, 
and seems to me a delicate and charming bit of colour- 
ing. I coveted it for myself last year but couldn't 
aflFord it, and now it struck me that a marriage was 
a thing creta notanda — not that I have got quite used 
to the notion of your marrying at Easter, — settling in 
your new home, where, as far as I can judge from plans 
of it, there is room for everything but getting your 
dinner. I notice how as one gets on in life the relative 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 313 

proportions of drawing-room and dining-room con- 
tinually change, very much to the advantage of the 
dining-room. But then one must begin by being 
esthetic, and I daresay your dining-room will be big 
enough for me. 

I hope if you read them you didn't believe a word of 
my papers on Oxford. It seems they began with a big 
blunder, and a very deliberate blunder too, about no 
historic connection existing between iElfred and Oxford. 
Professor Babington sends me the tracing of a coin with 
" iElfred, Oxenforde," upon it, and dehcately hints that 
there are several specimens. I didn't run down and 
dro\yn myself in the torrent, because that (being up in 
the hills) is frozen over, but I am only waiting for a 
thaw. Meanwhile, I shall of course desist from any 
further attempts to write history. 

A happy Christmas to you ! J. R. G. 

To E. A. Freeman 

Villa Congreve, San Remo, 

December 30, '71. 

I rejoiced much in your paper on the Swiss reforms 
in the S. R.y and so I do what you add in your letter ; 
but it raises one question I can't quite solve as to 
the practice of mediaeval communes. What became 
of a burgher of London if he settled, say at Bristol ? 
Did he remain a free-toll, or could he at once pay 
his town-penny and get his name written on the 
burghers' roll ? I don't mind me of any mediaeval 
borough where admission to citizenship was ever 
refused to a free man who paid all dues and customs 

— the practice was common enough later on when the 
corporations got close and rich, and I should doubt 
if your Swiss practice is a " mediaeval " relic. But 
how were the Swiss communes or boroughs formed, 

— by charters from whom ? — and can they be formed 



314 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

nowadays (like Brummagem), and if so by Cantonal or 
Federal authority ? 

The weather here continues pure summer. There 
isn't the least trace of winter, — it is always warm, sunny, 
cloudless, so that I can walk about without a hat and 
the like, — and my lung seems to be really getting on 
apace. My thoughts are wholly taken up with Little 
Book, and will be till I come home again with it — 
I hope — ready for press. I have been "worriting" 
ever since I began it as to how to end it, — how to 
manage the last chapter from Canning's re-entry into 
the Liverpool ministry in '22 till to-day. This after- 
noon it suddenly flashed on me how I could avoid both 
dangers — that of making it a mere newspaper summary 
or a "philosophical discussion" — in some such way as 
this: I. Canning — show the new tone which came 
over politics, and especially over our European rela- 
tions, and continue our foreign policy, wars, etc., to the 
present time. 2. Colonisation — history of Australia, 
emigration and the like — to the same date. 3. Con- 
stitutional Reform, from Catholic Emancipation to 
the last Reform Bill. 4. Commercial reform, taking 
all one can of commercial growth by the way, with Free 
Trade, and doing kootoo to Peel. 5. Intellectual 
progress, popular education, the reforms of schools and 
universities, advance and generalising character of 
science as in Lyell and Darwin, — religion in the phil- 
anthropy of the Evangelicals, the rise of the " Catholic " 
High Church folk, science producing religious liberal- 
ism, — literature reflecting all these various tendencies 
of the age, especially the economical and historical, our 
romance, humourists, poets. In this way, I think, a boy 
might learn to understand what was going on about 
him, — one could be perfectly exact, give dates and all 
that, — while it would avoid the controversial tone which 
a mere chronolpgical arrangement and final flourish of 
trumpets over " Mr. Gladstone " would involve. 

I am going to High Mass to-morrow, inasmuch as 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 315 

Catholicism has an organ and Protestantism only a 
harmonium, and the difference of truth between them 
don't seem to me to make up for the difference of 
instruments. The little ones here have been keeping 
Christmas more Anglico^ Christmas trees and plum- 
puddings; while the little Italian urchins have been star- 
ing at the quaint " Bethlehem " in the Capuchin Church 
here. I look in now and then, partly because it really 
does justice to Joseph — a person usually badly treated, 
but who has here the garb and bearing of a Venetian 
Doge, which was pretty much his position, I suppose 
— and partly because I get a deal of delight out of the 
shepherds who wear silk stockings, yellow breeches, em- 
broidered coats, and deliciously frizzled wigs. A Capu- 
chin is in attendance who acts as a sort of " Notes to 
the Bible," as " without note or comment " after the 
Brummagem platform one might fall into all sorts of 
heretical mistakes as to the reverend personages of the 
scene. 

Have you seen Stubbs's " Hymn on Froude and 
Kingsley " ? 

Froude informs the Scottish youth 
That parsons do not care for truth — 
The Reverend Canon Kingsley cries 
History is a pack of lies. 

What cause for judgments so malign ? 
A brief reflection solves the mystery. 
Froude believes Kingsley a divine. 
And Kingsley goes to Froude for history ! 

Good-bye, a merry Christmas to you and a happy 
New Year. — Ever yours, J. R. G. 

To Mrs. a Court 

4 Beaumont Street, 
March 26, 1872. 

My dear Mrs. a Court — I have been, hke Baron 
Munchausen's horse, frozen up ever since I reached 
England, and it is only to-day that sunshine has set 



3i6 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

me free. My arrival was the signal for a burst of 
fierce winter weather — snowstorms a day and a half 
long, black frosts, bitter rains. Andrew Clark's face^ 
when I walked into his consulting-room, was that of 
blank horror which would have made the fortune of a 
Garrick. He at once proposed to hand me over to 
Forbes Winslow ; it was not a case for ordinary 
practitioners like himself, he said with a grave humility, 
but for the physicians of Colney Hatch. However, I 
fascinated him into tapping and punching me in the 
old way, and his grimness relaxed. He thinks I have 
made great progress during the winter, that my lung 
is not merely passive and the disease promising to be 
arrested, but that there are real signs of heahng. In 
fact he asks for another year of care, and holds out 
prospect of a cure. Of course 1 executed a Pyrrhic 
war-dance of delight, and have been ever since in a 
state of wild enthusiasm. 

Perhaps it is this, perhaps it is the reaction after my 
depression at San Remo, that makes life seem won- 
derfully golden to me just now. Everybody is so 
thoroughly kind and delighted to see me. There was a 
most amusing race between the Stopford Brookes and 
some other friends to catch me, and run off with me 
on my arrival, as my own rooms were occupied ; and 
my table is covered with pretty notes of welcome. 
So you see I forgot all about the post, but I am far 
from forgetting the friendship and kindness at San 
Remo. 



You see I am very happy and feeling wonderfully 
well. I am, of course, up to my neck in literary 
projects, and my incessant volubility is a trial to my 
friends. But I tell them I am working off a winter's 
silence. I am wonderfully happy, and yet I should 
like another stroll up the Foce (?) Valley. But man is 
never contented even at his contentment. — Ever yours^ 

J. R. Green. 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 317 

To E. A. Freeman 

April 27, 1872. 
[On the Historical Review, The beginning is lost. 
Venable's " Summary " appeared annually in the Times7\ 

. . . resource by only treating people of an Eu- 
ropean bigness — such as Mazzini — by only treating 
them after death, and by avoiding the " newspaper 
biography " of the Times. But to any one who knows 
what a part Mazzini, e.g., has played in the history 
of the last thirty years, and how little " newspaper 
biographers " can tell about him, a real life of him by 
such a friend as Stansfield, for instance, would seem of 
direct historical value. 

As to the " Chronicle of Contemporary Events " I 
stand a bit alone, Macmillan doubting its commercial 
value, Bryce its historical. As to the latter that will 
settle itself, if as I hope I can induce Bryce himself to 
take it. My firm belief is that nothing is more 
wanted than an accurate account of the real current 
history of the day, done with some literary skill ; where 
the events shall be given, if not in the ultimate relation 
to each other and the world which only time can 
reveal, yet at any rate in some sort of relation to each 
other, and with the amount of light which a serious 
historical student from his knowledge of the past can 
throw on their character and value. I don't want an 
" Annual Register," or the chronicle in the Revue des 
deux mondes — still less Venable's summary of the year 
— but something to which all these point, and which 
none of these reaHse. 

Where, however, I especially need and claim your 
help is in the first class of articles — those which treat 
of a subject of the day from a distinctly historical 
point of view. In (of course) a very trivial way my 
middle in the ^S". R. this week on " English Loyalty " 
will illustrate what I mean. I am sure that people 
will be very grateful in the discussion of " hot " topics 
to see these institutions clearly and accurately traced 



3i8 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

in the past. I will say at once that the sort of thing 
I want from you is English History and the House of 
Lords. It is a question likely enough to be up in 
April when the Review might hope to appear ; and a 
simple expansion of what you say so well in your 
lectures just continued to the present day would be 
simply invaluable to a public very weary of diatribes 
on the one side and on the other. Tell me what you 
think of it, or whether there is any other subject you 
would personally prefer. 

With these to " swim the boat " I could face a very 
"severe and historic" lot of other articles, and in 
future numbers you may fire away with " Swiss Con- 
stitutions " and what not. But you will see, I know, 
that I can get others to do these, and that I shall 
find great difficulty in finding fit men to do the class 
of articles I am specially asking from you. 

I don't want you to answer this, but to think 
over it, so as to talk it well over when I visit 
Somerleaze. At Dickenson's I met Church, surely the 
most lovable of Deans. At any rate I fell straight- 
away in love with him, and do hope from a word he 
dropt that I may see more of him. How kind of old 
Hook to still remember me ! I have written to Stubbs. 
Good-bye. — Ever yours, J. R. Green. 

To A. Macmillan 

Dear Macmillan — I leave with you the sheets of 
Freeman's Sketch of European History^ which I have 
just looked over. It is good throughout, and my 
suggestions only bear on a few details. 

One I think important. If the book is to be used 
in schools, each chapter should close (or still better 
begin) with a short, clear summary of the period 
treated. Freeman has done this in two instances — 
not in the rest. For boys, too, the summary could 
be better treated by grouping as far as possible events 
in large masses chronologically. Thus, to give a very 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 



319 



rough instance, I would end the " Roman " chapter in 
some such way as this : " The characteristic of the 
earlier age of Roman history is the fact that it is 
an age of Conquest. After its first century of free 
government, Rome turned to the conquest of Italy in 
the hundred years that followed (400-300 B.C.), won 
in the next century (300-200 B.C.) from Carthage the 
dominion of the countries round the Mediterranean : 
and in the last two hundred years before Christ pushed 
her conquests over Asia and Syria in the East, Spain 
and Gaul in the West. Meanwhile her own civil dis- 
sensions and the strife between her rich and poor 
citizens threw her into the hands of military chieftains, 
and the Empire which had been practically established 
under Caesar was organised by Augustus." I only give 
this roughly as a specimen of the " schoolboy " fashion, 
which such a summary might take. 

To turn to small matters. I notice a section on 
Roman Literature — why not one on Greek ? — and one 
on the rise of modern Literature through the Crusades ? 

For greater clearness, would it not be better to 
place the settlement of Greeks and Latins (now at 
p. 11-12) at the end of the general Aryan settlements 
— say at p. 16 — so as to go on straight to Rome, etc.? 

Would it not be well to note that the struggle 
between Rome and Carthage was a war of races — that 
it gave the Aryan, and not the Shemite, the empire of 
the world .? Freeman has done this in the case of the 
battle of Chalons, " a struggle for life and death 
between the Aryan and Thracian races." Why not in 
that of the battle of Zama ? 

For the same reason, and so as to lay hold of boy- 
knowledge and /^ojy-interest, I would after the names 
Hasdrubal and Hannibal just point out the " Baal " in 
both, so as to link it on to what the boy knows 
from his Bible. 

In speaking of the rise of Christianity I think a 
word, however short, should be said of its moral effect 
on the' world — of the restoration of personal inde- 



320 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

pendence in its martyrs — of representative legislation 
in its Councils — of free discussion and free thought in 
its heresies. 

In Cap. I. Freeman has omitted to tell us where the 
original "Ariana" is. P. 70, introduction without 
explanation of " oligarchs " and " oligarchy," hard 
words for boys. — Ever yours faithfully, 

J. R. Green. 

To Mrs. a Court 

4 Beaumont Street, W. 
[1872]. 

[" The Poetry of Wealth " is in the Stray Studies. 
South Sea Bubbles by the Earl and the Doctor (Lord Pem- 
broke and Dr. Kingsley) appeared in 1872.] 

I should have pestered you with a visit long ago, my 
dear Mrs. a Court, if I had not been continually hoping 
for a day when I should bring good health and good 
spirits with me. Unluckily the warm weather does 
nothing for me and Clark looks blacker and blacker 
and — but you know how hypochondriacs {illegible) me, 
or would if good taste allowed them. One hypochon- 
driac, however, knows how to croon in quiet, and not 
to " worritt " his friends ! 

I had a sort of instinct I should be a prisoner soon. 
So a few weeks back I turned out of my rooms and 
turned in a very PreraphaeHte friend with carte-blanche 
as to money and design. The result is wonderful. 
The end of my room reminds me of a conflagration, — 
beneath, heaven ; above, a brilliant red ! The doors 
are in the sea-sickness style, green picked out with a 
sickly blue ! My poor old writing-desk, dear from 
many an association, had been clothed in light blue 
with lines of red. When I re-entered my rooms for 
the first time, my artistic friend had just begun cover- 
ing it with black dragons. I " yowled," and dashed 
the paint-boxes downstairs, but the dragons had already 
been completed, and yawn on me whenever I want to 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 321 

write a gay little note. " Is it nice ? " I asked my 
landlady, " sarcastic." That venerable woman stood 
gazing on the scene. " Not nice," replied the critic of 
the kitchen, "not nice, sir, no ! but certainly spruce ! " 

Yesterday I ran down to Bethnal Green with Sidney 
Colvin, who knows more about French art than most 
people, and who was in raptures over the Watteaus, 
far finer, he said, than any at Paris. I don't know 
whether you read a screed of mine on the " Poetry of 
Wealth," a little time back, but a collection of this 
sort is just one of the big bits of poetry that only £^ s. d. 
on a gigantic scale can bring about. And there, face 
to face with it, was the poetry of poverty, — Bethnal 
Green in its rags and wretchedness, wandering about it 
in shoals, staring at the naughty Greuzes, at the mar- 
vellous Rembrandts, at the dash of Horace Vernet 
(how vulgar and bad it was !), and the grace and great- 
ness of Sir Joshua. Didn't you fall in love with that 
delightful Mrs. Hoare, that mother bending over her 
baby, such a mother and such a baby ! What one 
longed to know was what Bethnal Green made of it all. 
Very little distinctly, I should fancy ; but more a sort 
of gorgeous haze of novel and unknown beauty and 
colour — the sort of thing I should have from the first 
half hour in one of the " Earl's " Pacific Islands. 

I remember a lady friend of mine going with me 
down into one of my slums, all fresh and pretty and 
golden-haired; and as we turned away I noticed a 
ragged-looking, biggish girl sitting on a doorstep with 
great dilated eyes ; and turning back asked her why 
she looked so. " Cos she's such a one — er," said my 
big-eyed friend, drawing in her breath. Now my friend 
was merely a pretty fresh English girl ; but to this 
Dulcinea of the slums she was just what a Sir Joshua 
is to us — a " One — er." 

I see these people leaning over the palings in the 
park or grouped about the gates at a grand dinner — 
all that unknown wealth and ease and beauty, those 
horses sweeping by, those gent flunkies, those girls 



322 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

with bright jewels and bare arms are to them the 
Poetry of Poverty. 

But where am I running to ? Do always write to 
me as you write to that dear friend of yours who is 
drawing near to the unknown land. How glad I am 
you have her with you again ! Your words came like 
a dumb peal, that soft music of muffled bells I used 
to hear long ago. — Ever yours, J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

Hotel de L'Univers, Florence, 
September i8, 1872. 

(Direct " Poste Restante," as I may change my Hotel.) 

You see, dear Freeman, I am where you have never 
been, in the dear city by the Arno. I left England on 
the 9th, and spent two pleasant days in Paris with the 
Humphry Wards, who were on their return home from 
their Long Vacation Tour ; then I span along to 
Bologna, where I had hoped to meet the Brookes. 
But I found that "finding Httle to see in North Italy " 
they had spent their day at Ravenna and rushed on to 
the Arno. I was too disappointed and tired to visit 
Ravenna again by myself, so leaving it for the spring 
I came on here at once. 

I made my journey tolerable by long chats with an 
American bishop and an Italian carpenter. The first 
was a delightful fellow, in reality absolutely free from 
vanity, but in speech the vainest bishop that ever 
walked, which from my experience of the R. Reverend 
Bench, is saying a good deal. " You see I am a 
bishop," he said gaily, — pointing to his violet shirt, — 
" yes ! I am the youngest Bishop in America. I am 
only thirty-eight now, and when I was consecrated I was 
only thirty-six. Many of my clergy were priests before 
I was born." It was charming to listen to his croon of 
admiration over himself and his talent. " I owe my 
elevation simply to my talents ! I am remarkably gifted ! 
And yet my talents are not as brilliant as they were in 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 323 

my boyhood. I was the most remarkable boy ! Still 
I am very gifted, and have much to thank God 
for in giving me the talents which raised me to my 
bishoprick ! " It was so much better than our pre- 
latic maunderings about " calling " and " unworthi- 
ness." He was a thoroughly good fellow, swore by 
Newman, was a Liberal and had no fear of freedom, 
beheved that " American ideas " would soon Hberalise 
Catholicism, laughed at the fuss made about " Infalli- 
bihty," because no Pope would decide in any other sense 
than that generally held by the doctors of the Church. 
" If a Pope went mad, sir, he would be locked up, and 
nobody would dream of regarding his ravings as in- 
fallible. And you may push that principle a good long 
way, you see ! " Yet more striking was what he said 
of the Irish Immigrants. " They love their faith, don't 
they ? " said I. " Not their faith," he answered, " but 
their works ! In Ireland the priest follows them about 
with a good whip, and is their master, — and so they are 
good. When they land in America they find them- 
selves their own masters. No American priest would 
dream of tyrannising over his equals. And so they 
break out into excess. But after all it is better for 
them to learn freedom in this way than not to learn it 
at all. I don't believe in * good Catholics' that are so 
because they are slaves." On the whole, I was pretty 
well reconciled to Episcopacy by my Bishop of Spring- 
field, N.W. 

It is jolly to be in Florence again, though the sun- 
shine is of the torrid zone order. I saw a labourer 
working in his shirt, and wished I had brought out a 
good all round surplice, which might dispense with under 
habiliments. As yet I have seen only a few things 
which I had not time for when I was here before, — things 
which jyoa would have found time for anyhow, I mean 
the two basihcas at San Miniato and Fiesole. Both 
are of the same date, 1016 and 1028 ; the first much 
larger and more grandly situated than the other (it 
stands atop of a hill, looking grandly down on Florence 



324 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

and its great domes and towers), but sheeted over with 
the Giotto work, the marbles, etc., one sees so much 
of in the famous tower and the Duomo, and even its 
original columns all cased in Scagliola ! Fiesole is a 
poor little hamlet now, and so they left the church 
much more alone. Both are of the Zeno-type at 
Verona in construction, but I notice that this raised 
presbytery needs a great long nave to make it really 
effective. With the shorter nave of these two churches 
it looks simply like another church, which you can't see 
from the church itself. The best thing I have seen 
architecturally to-day was San Spirito, — a late business 
of Brunelleschi's and full of all kind of faults in detail. 
But it seemed to me to have a real originality of its own 
in this way, that being built (fifteenth century) at a 
time when the big Popey altars had come in and hid the 
older apses and choirs, Brunelleschi evidently like a 
sensible man took his Popey altar as a point of de- 
parture, — stuck it down in a great choir under a central 
dome, flanked it on either side by the highest transepts 
you ever saw, six bays apiece, and reduced the eastern 
limb to just such another transept. So that in fact if it 
weren't for the long and fine nave you would have a 
grand Eastern Cross church with the altar in the mid- 
dle of it. Unluckily the conception of the ground 
plan isn't carried out above, — and above all the Dome 
which ought to be a whacker is a poor wee thing. 

Please get for me Parker s address at Romey and if you 
can spare him a line to say I shall be there about the 
beginning of November and bid him be good to me, so 
much the better. Likewise, if you have copies of your 
papers on Lucca and Pisa send them to me at once, — 
as I am going there in about a fortnight, and should like 
to learn a bit. I am very well, — started from England 
in very different health from the miserable critter of last 
year's journey, and am still well, though a little fatigued 
with the train-work and the excessive heat and the 
mosquitoes. But that will soon pass away. Write to 
me soon, and tell me all the news of your meeting at 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 325 

Crewkerne, etc. But at any rate send me In time (if 
you have them) the Lucca, etc., papers. — Ever yours, 
dear Freeman, J. R. Green. 

To W. Boyd Dawkins 

Florence, 
October 1872. 

I find from one of Freeman's amusing letters, dear 
Dawkins, with a postscript of yours, that you have 
been down at Taunton, and fighting with wild beasts of 
orthodoxy such as H. at Ephesus. I wish I could 
have been of the party, and I might well have been but 
for my wish to spend a month with the Brookes at 
Florence before entering on my winter exile. Unluckily 
the Brookes are called hurriedly home, and so I have 
fallen between two stools. But Florence consoles one 
for a good many disappointments. 

I had great fun in running over from England, and 
spent a couple of days in Paris with Humphry Ward and 
his new wife, who have been scampering about the Black 
Forest, Switzerland, and the Italian Lakes through the 
Long, after the fashion of young Tutors. There is 
something curiously petty anent the present arrangement 
of French affairs. They have left, for instance, all the 
burnt building under the Commune still in ruins, with 
the exception of the Palais Royal, by way of keeping 
up the " Red spectre " to frighten the bourgeoisie into 
conservatism. I don't think I shall ever forget the day 
when I passed through Marseilles and saw Paris under 
fire. But surely there was something nobler even in the 
ends of the Commune than in this shopkeeper's [illegible) 
of M. Thiers. My most amusing comrade en route 
was a Yankee Bishop, a" young thing" of thirty-eight, 
who has already been consecrated a couple of years, but 
was still ingenuously proud of his prelacy and showed 
his violet shirt (he was a Roman Catholic bishop) with 
the greatest self-satisfaction. " I owe my rise entirely to 
my talents," he observed sweetly, — " not that I am as 
talented as I once was ! I was a wonderful boy ! Still 



326 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

I have great talents no doubt, and it is to these alone 
that I owe my elevation." Then there was an ItaHan 
cabinetmaker who had seen Garibaldi in ' ^<^ ride into 
Como. " I felt he was a hero because he was the one 
cool head and quiet voice among us." I delighted him 
by telling him a story of Giuseppe Mazzini, which you 
may not have heard. " What would you have taught 
in school ? " asked a friend of mine. " One thing at 
any rate in all," replied Mazzini, " and that is some 
knowledge of Astronomy. A man learns nothing if he 
hasn't learnt to wonder, and Astronomy better than any 
science teaches him something of the mystery and 
grandeur of the universe. Now a man who feels this 
will soon feel something of his own greatness and 
mystery, and then for the first time he is a Man." I 
wonder whether Manchester would admire that as I 
admire it. 

Yes, Florence consoles me for a good deal, — espe- 
cially when one isn't melting away into the Arno. When 
I arrived some weeks ago the sun was more intense 
than any heat I ever felt even in the Riviera. That 
great dome, that exquisite tower of Giotto, glowed with 
heat and light as they rose into the cloudless sky. 
How I wish you were here, dear Dax ! You know 
the general look of the place. It lies in a basin of the 
Arno with low hills close round it, and the higher line 
of the Apennines behind, a brown mass of houses float- 
ing as it were round great square palazzi and long 
church-masses ; and above all the mighty cathedral and 
the huge Town Hall. There is something to me 
especially delightful in this sternness and gloomy defiance 
of the greater Florentine buildings, — just because it 
serves as contrast to the art work so profusely scattered 
about the frescoes and statues and exquisite carvings 
that fringe, as it were, this stern exterior. Here Art is 
everything, — everything save History. I don't know 
whether I like best lounging through the great galleries, 
or sauntering down street after street whose names have 
been familiar to me for years. 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 327 

I shall stay here till the beginning of November, 
when the cold sets fairly in and when Rome gets cool 
enough after the rains to live in without malaria. I 
hope that Clark's allowing me to spend the winter in 
Rome (it is the first time I could get his permission) 
means that I shall be allowed to spend next winter in 
England. At any rate, believe that I am far, far better 
than I could ever have hoped to have become, though a 
very little still suffices to throw me back. Remember 
what a great pleasure a letter is in these far-off parts. 
My direction till the beginning of November is Poste 
Restante, Florence ; after that Poste Restante, Rome. 
But I hope to hear from you at the first address. I 
wish I had seen you in London, (why do not you 
spend ^d. on a card to forewarn me of your coming ?) 
if only to congratulate you on your Professorship. I 
begin to think I am the one human being left who is 
not a Professor with hundreds a year. — Believe me, 
dear Boyd Dawkins, affectionately yours, 

J. R. Green. 

To the Rev. Isaac Taylor 

Hotel de la Paix, Florence, 
October 5, 1872. 

It is an immense comfort, my dear Taylor, that you 
have really settled down at some definite corner of the 
earth in your plannings. I came away from Twicken- 
ham with a sort of Europe- Asia- Africa- and America- 
feehng, — an oppressive sense of the size and infinite 
variety of the world which I don't think I ever had 
before. When I listened to your easy transitions from 
a suggestion of the Second Cataract to that of Madeira, 
your passing preference for Lisbon, and your glance 
at Algiers, I remember thinking, though I did not 
venture in the presence of Mrs. Taylor to express the 
thought, that one of the temptations would have been 
no temptation to me, and that when " all the kingdoms 
of the world " were spread at my feet I should have been 



328 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

simply " mammered," as my poor folk used to say. 
For myself I haven't a bit of the Ida-Pfeiffer feeling, 
and should simply feel giddy at circumnavigating the 
globe. I like a little quiet flight over the Alps, and 
then I settle down on my little bough and twitter till 
it is time to fly back again. I was so wild for a com- 
panion in England that had you taken me then I 
would have gone to Cheops' land or any other; but 
a month in Italy has reconciled me to my solitary lot 
in some measure, and the Pyramids have become an 
Abomination. Moreover, I have plunged wildly into 
work, and if I go on as I am doing shall have got 
my book finished by Christmas ; which Christian Feast 
I shall then be able to celebrate with High Jinks suit- 
able to its solemnity. Seriously, my dear Taylor, I 
am in the humour for working and getting Little 
Book off my hands, and if I go P. and O.-ing (i) I 
shall probably never finish it at all, (2) I shall have 
to break into my work by writing for S. R. and bread, 
and (3) I shall do myself no good, for my cough is 
gone to sleep, and as Tommy Moore saith, when 
" catarrh sleepeth, wake it not ; " so had we not better 
say that the Idle Apprentice should go up the Nile, 
and join the Industrious Apprentice at Rome when 
his Pyramidal course is run ? . . . 

The Brookes left me at the beginning of the week, 
and I am in the hands of Yankee Gals, who flourish 
and abound here. They tell me that in Yankee Land 
a popular preacher gets his X^5'^'^ clear, all curates 
paid, etc. ! Shall I resume my white tie across the 
Western Wave? Imagine — yes, you capitalists can 
imagine but I can't — ^^1500 a year clear! But then 
saith my Yankee gal, " You would have to swallow 
our canons, you know ! " " Carissima mia," I reply, 
"for ^^1500 a year I would swallow all the artillery 
in America." 

I had an awful steeplechase up the Uffizi and the 
Pitti stairs so long as the Brookes were here ; we used 
to go about, each of us with a volume of Murray 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 329 

in one hand and a volume of Crowe and Cavalcaselle 
in the other. Our lightest talk was of Fra Bartolomeo 
and the frescoes at the Carmini. But art has fled with 
Stopford over the Apennines. I do Little Book all 
the morning, and lounge in the sunshine all the after- 
noon, and do dinner and Yankee Gal till I go to bed. 
That is what I call life, — not all that treadmill — 
asstheticism, big volumes, and tall staircases, into which 
my blighted existence was rapidly dying. Freeman 
has a way of saying if you want him to look at any- 
thing after 1200, "It isn't my period." How he 
would have escaped the Giottos ! But I haven't his 
courage, — oh, those Crowes ! No wonder my Roman 
friends thought the bird an unlucky one. But they 
didn't know what an awfully heavy bird he is to carry ! 
... — Faithfully yours, J. R. Green. 

To Mrs. a Court 

Hotel de la Paix, Florence, 
October 6, 1872. 

I often wonder what you were when you were not 
(to use your own self-description) " feeble and fatuous," 
dear Mrs. a Court ; for even in this terrible state 
when you can neither "read nor think" you seem to 
be able to write the pleasantest letters in the world. 
There are some people that have that peculiar quality 
of brightness, a sort of genial activity of temper that 
acts upon me like a flash of sunshine, and here I come 
across it. I remember how " sunny " those afternoons 
used to feel at San Remo, when you whirled me out of 
the Club and the Blues, or those eventides when chat 
blended in such an odd way with Schubert, — ah, well — 
and here I am " sitting alone, sitting alone " by Arno 
with nothing to comfort me but liberal sunshine and 
the Yankee girl of the table d'hote. The Stopford 
Brookes flitted away a week ago. Till then we used 
to spend all day in churches and picture-galleries, with 
huge volumes of Crowe and Cavalcaselle under our 



330 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

arms, getting up the " old masters " in the most 
orthodox fashion ; though our studies were sadly 
broken by Brooke's tendency to fling himself down 
whenever he could in the sunshine, and my tendency 
to the most frivolous and unaesthetic talk. However, 
it is all over now. I haven't troubled the stairs of 
Pitti or Uffizi since they went, or lounged in the 
convent of San Marco or done kootoo to the Giottos 
of Santa Croce. 

The Blues hover round me and my one way of 
destroying the Blues was to fling myself into steady 
work. So I plunged into my book, or rather the notes 
for it which are all but complete ; and have made such 
way in the work that I think I can clearly promise 
Macmillan the MSS. at Christmas. But to do this — 
and I mean to do it — I must renounce the Saturday 
and all its works, though I meant to flood that charm- 
ing periodical with lovely " middles," and devote 
myself every morning to the immortal, etc., etc., etc. 
So you may devote your sixpence a week, my dear 
Mrs. a Court, to the philosophic Spectator with perfect 
composure. 

To E. A. Freeman 

Hotel de la Paix, Florence, 
October 1 1, 1872. 

I am getting so behindhand, dear Freeman, with 
your letters and papers that I had better devote 
this letter to business. In the first place I have to 
thank you very heartily for both the " Ravenna " and 
the " Romanesque " papers ; nothing could possibly be 
clearer or more convincingly put than the last. The 
first, though the more delightful of the two to me, 
strikes me on re-reading as too " allusive " and re- 
quiring too much previous knowledge for even such 
learned readers as those of the N. British ^arterly ! 
The only point in the " Romanesque " paper at which 
I stuck was the expression of feeling on your part 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 331 

that a modern Romanesque building was an absurdity. 
You put it as a matter of feeling, and so one can't 
argue on it, but surely there is nothing ridiculous in 
that early fifteenth century Romanesque of the first 
Italian Revival, out of which so much might have 
come but for the later " classical " movement. I re- 
member well your delight at an arcade of it at Bologna, 
and your cry " What might not these Italians have 
done if they had only carried on their own style ? " 
Why then is it impossible to carry it on ? 

Concerning my own writing or non-writing : I 
brought as you know my notes out here, and am 
writing away fast. Since the Brookes went some ten 
days ago I have done from the end of the Peasant 
Revolt of 13 8 1 to the end of the "New Learning" 
in 1520. I daresay you would stare to see seven 
pp. devoted to the Wars of the Roses, and fifteen or 
sixteen to Colet, Erasmus, and Tommy More, " Great 
Tom," as he ought to be called, — however, so it is. 
I think this section of mine on the New Learning, 
with the previous ones on the Peasant Revolt which 
was really an account of the whole development of 
agriculture and landed tenure from the Conquest to 
13 8 1, and on the "Towns," by far the best things I 
have done yet. To come back to " facts." If I get 
along as I am doing I shall have done my Book about 
Christmas ; and shall then be able to undertake France. 
If so, I shall begin the Angevins on my return in 
May. I still can't decide between " England under 
its French Kings," which would let in Stivy, and 
"under its Angevin Kings" or "under the House of 
Anjou," which would exclude him. Why don't you 
take as a title " English' History in the Middle Ages," 
and take it in one volume from Billy to Barnet? 
Remember that the whole value of the thing for boys 
and children will lie in your not making too long a 
story of it ; and I am packing it all into one basket 
from Hengist to Bobby Lowe. 



332 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

I shall write to the dear old boy. I am so sorry to 
hear he has been ill. As to Bryce I told him to say 
when he stood on the "bridge beneath the water'* 
" Caesarem fortunasque " and he would get over. 
But there ought to be an act against " Bryce-wander- 
ings " with special clauses against geysers and Alp- 
climbings. I simply don't believe the " Norman " 
story. I have questioned one or two Norman people 
I have met of late years very closely about this said 
" no Frenchman " — feeling, and they utterly deny it. 
Do you remember the reply of the farmer to you 
when in his pride at being a Norman you said, " And 
no Frenchman " — his sudden outburst of " French " 
patriotism ? 

Florence is not very bright just now, for we have 
the rains on ; but the weather still remains pleasantly 
warm. My own health was making wonderful progress, 
but for the four last days, whether I had overworked 
or caught cold somehow I don't know, I have fallen 
back and my cough has been more troublesome. Still 
when I hear of your English autumnal weather, I hug 
myself a wee bit on being out of it. Besides my Book 
I am doing little save Florentine reading, for the most 
part about painters and sculptors whom I want to 
weave into my notions of certain periods of Florentine 
history. For whatever you may make of England, it 
is absolute madness to try and dissociate the " social 
and aesthetic " from the political here. And I must 
own the more I have worked and thought over our 
own story as a whole — and I shall always thank Little 
Book for making me do this — the more its political 
history has seemed to spring out of and be moulded 
into form by the " social and religious " history you 
like to chaff me about. You see I shall die in my 
sins ! 

Did you send me any Taunton paper with the tale 
of your doings therein ? If so I never got it. Has 
anything further been done about the " Somersetshire 
History" which Hunt was to edit and wherein we 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 233 

were to figure at the tail of Sanford and Scarth ? I 
suppose "Italy" drove it out of Hunt's head as Italy- 
has driven many things out of many heads. Ah, cara 
ItaHa ! I am afraid she takes the light a little out of 
other lands ; to me our own history has seemed a 
shade narrow, aldermannic, unpoetic ever since I crossed 
the Alps. But even you, Teuto-Teutonnicorum, 
yielded to the witchery of Venice and found your 
Capua in a gondola. Oh, how I triumphed on that 
memorable day ! 

Good-bye ; remember how great a charity letters 
are, and how great a pleasure jyc^z^r letters always bring. 
— Ever yours affectionately, J. R. Green. 

To Mrs. a Court 

Hotel d'Angleterre, Rome, 
November 8 [1872]. 

Are you Scotch, dear Mrs. a Court, or does some 
uncanny gift of second sight run in your blood that 
you alone of all the world knew I was in Rome ? It is 
only a flying peep of a few days ; for I stayed too long 
at Florence, and the broken weather has pinched me, so 
that I think it wiser to go and be quiet at Capri till the 
winter is over and gone, and then spend the spring 
here. . . . 

Christian Rome (save a look at the Sistine and the 
Loggia of Raphael) I left utterly alone, to wait for the 
spring. But heathen Rome is another matter. It is 
made for invalids. It is purposely arranged that they 
may see it perfectly from their carriages, or with little 
walks from their carriages ; and all the dear old heathen 
things seem to know that you are too ill to bear the 
streets and crowd, and so lie out in fields and vineyards 
and fresh air and hedges and unutterable delights. Of 
course this isn't true of all, for instance the Pantheon ; 
but it is true of Roman Rome as a whole, and this alone 
gives the wandering through the ruins a charm which 
no other Italian city possesses. Then, too, there is the 



334 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

charm which arises from the immense extent to which 
what you see surpasses your expectations. I had ex- 
pected a great deal, but what I expected seems ridiculous 
when I compare it with what I found. It is not merely 
that this or that temple or basilica or bath is beautiful 
or colossal, — it is that they are all beautiful, that, with 
a few delicious exceptions, they are all colossal, and that 
the most beautiful and colossal of all are jammed up 
together in one overpowering mass from the Capitol to 
the Colosseum, that exceeds in effect anything on earth. 
I hope that word "jammed" does not shock you, but 
it exactly expresses what I mean, the way in which a 
perfect crowd of huge buildings, each of which could 
amaze one, are flung and huddled together in one 
narrow street that can't be longer and is only half as 
wide as St. James's Street or Piccadilly. Yes, I believe 
it is about a fourth longer. 

Then too I had heard so much about the "petty" 
hills of Rome, and seen such jeers at their military 
importance, and such talks of going up them without 
knowing it, that when I saw them I shouted for joy. 
They are hills, well defined, with steep and often (as 
the Palatine) steeply scarped sides which a stockade 
could enable a New Zealander to hold against a host of 
cockney scorners ; and they are good big spaces too, — 
I drove round the Palatine, and found it quite equal to 
the block between St. James's Street and the Hay- 
market, Piccadilly, and Pall Mall, a fair site for a 
respectable town at any time. 

How you would have smiled to see me doing pen- 
ance in St. Peter's and owning myself in the wrong ! I 
went prepared with all sorts of charges against the out- 
side, and it deserved every one of them. So too I had 
a pocketful of faults to find with the inside — until I 
entered. From that moment, except the waste of the 
side aisles, I could see none. No interior of a great 
church ever so satisfied all my conditions of taste before. 
It conveyed the impression of its size, and yet its size 
only lent grandeur to its beauty ; and, seen as I saw it. 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 32s 

full of light and colour, there was a pervading joy and 
lightsomeness amidst all its peaceful quiet which I have 
never felt elsewhere. It was such a sweet bit of irony, 
this finding in the chief church of what people call dark 
bigotry and obscure mysteries the brightest and least 
mysterious Christian sanctuary ever seen. 

Good-bye, give my love to that wise creature whom 
in a spirit of irony you call Baby. I suppose she has 
another Rosso and another "friend." — Yours ever, 

J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

Hotel de Russie, Naples, 
Tuesday, November 12, 1872. 

I have been reading your " Sketch," dear Freeman, 
to-night with an admiration that grows the more the 
farther I read. It is certainly one of the most masterly 
things you have ever done. I intend to keep it as a 
model before me in the little " France," but it is very, 
very hard to be simple^ to tell nothing but what needs 
to be told, and to tell it in the plainest and most straight- 
forward way. However, I have learnt a good many 
things from you in my lifetime, and I will try to learn 
that. As yet (I have read up to Saxon Emperors now) 
you have got quite free from what I used to think your 
besetting sins, — crowding and allusiveness ; the book 
reads easily, and yet simple as it is and looks it is rich 
enough in suggestions to furnish every professor in 
England with pegs to hang hundreds of lectures on. 

I ought to have sent the notice of it to S. R. ere 
now, but it had hardly reached Florence when the long 
rains and the sudden change to cold threw me back ; and 
after a vain struggle against the Fates I had to make 
up my mind to change all my plans, especially that of 
a winter at Rome — which I find I am still too suscep- 
tible of cold to risk, — and to resolve on taking refuge 
for the three winter months from the middle of Novem- 
ber to the middle of February in Capri, like Tiberius. 



336 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

I was wretchedly ill and depressed during the few days 
I was able to spend at Rome ; but so long as I could 
see it all illness and depression seemed to flee away. I 
thought I brought a pretty big anticipation of the 
Eternal City with me, but big as it was it shrivelled 
before the reality. It is simply impossible to conceive 
what Rome is from books or pictures or plans. To 
understand it one must see it. 

This looks like tall talk in a man who only ran 
through Rome, " more Americano^^ in three or four 
days ; but if one is determined to leave all Christian 
things from the Catacombs down to Pope Pius's 
wonderful beadles to be seen in the spring, and if one 
sticks simply to the Heathen things, one can get a much 
truer and grander notion of Rome in a few days, than 
would be possible of many smaller cities. In the first 
place, with the exception of a few things like the Pan- 
theon, Old Rome lies by itself away from the new. 
You haven't to go hunting up and down streets to 
discover a temple here or a basilica there. Literally, you 
" go out into the wilderness to see." You get out of the 
streets and away from the people, and there lonely and 
silent stands Rome. Your eye wanders from one great 
bit of Heathendom to another, but there is nothing else 
— nothing to break the one single impression of Rome. 
Then, again, the bulk of what one sees lies massed 
together in a way I never dreamt of. It is only a pistol- 
shot's distance from the Capitol to the Colosseum. 
The space between the Palatine and the Esquiline, from 
the one to the other of these two points is in its broadest 
part, the Forum, only a good stone-throw broad, and 
elsewhere a mere broad street. And yet into this space 
are crowded, huddled, smashed together (for that is the 
impression it gives me) a mob of buildings each 
colossal and each identified with some great thing or 
man. On a map one doesn't realise this, but seen on 
the spot it is the impression which tells most, I think, 
this sense of the crowd of great things in front, behind, 
and on every side of one. If one tries, as I tried stand- 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY 



337 



ing there, to restore the buildings themselves, and then 
to stick into their intervals the pillars and statues one 
knows were there, one can only conceive the Forum as 
a host of huge buildings in the narrow spaces between 
which the Roman crowd passed in little streamlets of life. 

Of course there are great things outside this heart 
of Rome, but here begins a new charm for people as 
tired and weak as I was when I stayed there. You are 
not poking about a musty old town. You are out in 
the fields. You drive to the Baths of Caracalla, for 
instance, through vineyards and along a pleasant coun- 
try lane with roses nodding at you in the hedgerows. 
Another country lane takes you to the Baths of Titus. 
And when you climb on the big fragments of brick- 
work you may see the fields all round you, and the white 
oxen toiling along with their heavy yoke to the far-off 
town. 

Then, too (you see in what a fitful way I am gab- 
bling), you get your Rome. The faith of one's youth 
is restored. I don't mean " sensu Parkeriensi," or that 
one gets a Fides Romulea or a Fides Lupina, but that 
one again believes in the Hills. I think it was Keightley 
who first put into my poor little head when I was a boy 
that the Hills were mere ups and downs like a London 
street, and that though you might " re-create them by 
imagination," etc., etc. I remember Millard scoffing in 
class about the Tarpeian rock as a " fair jump " and so 
on. And so the moment I got my eyes off the Forum 
I looked for the Hills. And there they were. If 
Millard tried his fair jump from the Capitol all the 
Alpine Clubmen in the world would never " set Humpty 
Dumpty up again." And as to Palatine it was just the 
sort of Hill the story needs, — not Snowdon or Dwahelg 
— no, I cant spell it, that ungodly mountain in India, — 
but a large square plateau with steep escarped sides, 
which, palisaded and with Maoris defending the stock- 
ade (say your friend Harold), would be a tough 
nut to crack. To the opposite rise of the Esquiline is 
still a steep pull — and as to the Pincian my cough 



338 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

used to tell me that was a good pitch anyhow. And so 
I have got a " Fides Collina " of a very firm sort back 
again. 

I was too weak to undertake going over the Palatine 
and its excavations ; so I left that to the spring and 
quietly drove round it. All the way round there are 
the same steep sides, — it is a block about as big as the 
space between St. James's St. and the Haymarket with 
Pall Mall and Piccadilly for the other two sides. And 
all round as you go without interruption there tower 
above you mass after mass of brickwork, sometimes 
towers or huge arches, or here a square piece of wall, 
but for the most part formless and vast. I couldn't 
have conceived the impression that this continuous 
multitude of huge fragments made — probably the im- 
pression was even grander than that which the Palace of 
the Caesars would have of itself created, and yet what 
manner of thing must this Palace of the Caesars have 
been which Nero found too little to live in ! 

Thursday^ November 14. — I am afraid you will hate 
me as a Parker Redivivus if I bore you any more with 
Rome or my visits to SS. Peter and Paul, the latter 
whereof (rebuilt as it is) is the most wonderful church 
in point of space-effect (if I may coin the word) I ever 
saw, and rebuilt or no, one of the grandest buildings I 
ever stood in. It stands away in the fields by itself in 
our Apollinaris-in-Classe fashion. But Rome is gone 
and the sunshine is gone, and in place thereof behold 
Naples and the rain ! I stood a month of rain at 
Florence, October being the "rainy season" in Tuscany 
this year ; but November turns out to be the " rainy 
season " for the South, so I am in for another month. 
Patientia ! It is all most English ! But then this is 
the 1 2th of November, and I am writing at eight in the 
evening in my room without a fire and yet as warm as 
a toast. Ah, you who never shiver ! You little know 
what warmth is to poor shivery little me ! Capri, my 
home for the winter, lies " across the wave " some few 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 



339 



miles — I see it from my window and likewise the 
steamer that goes to it, but when that steamer goes to 
that island I know not. I am told it goes every day, 
which seems hopeful ; then that it has not gone for 
more than a week, which brings despair ; then that it 
starts only if it is fine weather; and then that the 
weather is no good unless there are twenty passengers 
— and so on. I think the Boat must belong to the 
world of the Infinite and the Unconditioned. It 
passes human understanding and requires faith. I 
believe (" because it is impossible ") that I shall get to 
Capri. When I do, my address will be 

Hotel Quisisana, 
IsoLA Di Capri, 

Napoli, 

which being interpreted means the " Here-you-get- 
well Hotel," which is cheering and instructive. 
Good-bye. — Ever thine, J. R. Green. 

Hotel Quisisana, Isola di Capri, 

December 30, '72. 

[This letter refers to the Historic Course for Schools^ 
edited by Freeman. Green intended to write upon 
France, but ultimately gave up the plan.] 

By vast ill luck, my dear Freeman, Macmillan sent 
all my latter-tide letters and papers not to " Poste 
Restante " at Florence (whither I wrote), but to my 
Hotel — which has only now sent them on. I send back 
the proofs probably too late, but in any case I had 
better send them. 'TVo. first sheets of "Italy " have never 
reached me — I send the only two which have. Sismondi 
is followed servilely and blindly throughout, and a 
foundation is laid on which let no man build. My 
notes in the margin are for you^ not for the gentleman 
who "wants no help in his history " such as poor I am 
very glad to get from any quarter. No doubt you 
have already put a good deal right, but I have said my 
say nevertheless, as you bade me to. 



340 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

As to the general plan I again deplore — as I did 
in the other case — the entire exclusion of all stories, 
anecdotes, or anything which by any possibility can 
enliven the tale. As it stands the book is utterly 
unreadable. Of course this is a matter which rests 
wholly with you, but I do hope you will consider 
whether absolute dryness and unreadableness is a sine 
qua non in educational books. The style, too, is terrible. 
The " Wheeler's Analyses " of my young days were 
light reading to these handbooks. 

As to the " Scotland " it improves wonderfully as it 
gets on — the James I. part is very nicely done — but 
the opening is terrible. I hope you will get the first 
sheet wholly re-written — it is absolutely ungrammatical, 
unintelligible, and un-everything. But the War of 
Independence is very fairly and clearly put, save one 
or two sentences which I have marked ; and what 
follows is clearly and simply told. Only here again — 
there isn't a story — not a single one — nor a character- 
istic speech — nor the " picter " of anybody. Did you 
issue instructions to your Harem strictly forbidding 
the Beautiful and the Interesting.'' 

The " Germany " I won't meddle with, as it is in 
your-and-Ward's-hands. But I note with wonder that 
it beginneth before the Beginning of Things. I thought 
all the Wee Works were to start from 888, and lo, I 
behold Arminius and a host of prehistoric critters ! I 
am sure your original plan was the right one, and I am 
sorry you haven't stuck to it, and warned your Wee 
sub-workers to stick to it. One sub-worker at any 
rate doth hereby strike against any " overtime " before 
988. I think a page of distant allusion will do for all 
before in the Little France. Likewise I won t divide 
by Kings, a system whereby History is made Tory 
unawares and infants are made to hate History. . . . 

This is too much of a business letter to be turned 
into a very-letter, so I won't tell you of our Capri 
jinks at Christmas, of crackers in the Piazza and big 
guns roaring from the cliffs — and day after day of 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 341 

glorious sunshine which makes Christmastide the jolliest 
thing out. You poor drenched EngHshry ! Think ! 
To-day is December 30. I was out at eight this 
morning on the balcony sunning myself without a 
hat {yich I've no hair on the top of my head in the 
place where the hair ought to grow, you know !) — I 
wrote this morning in the garden till the sun waxed 
too hot and drove me in for shade. I clomb this 
afternoon unto a high hill and dug out bits of marble, 
old pots, and painted stucco from a villa of old Tib. 
Imp. whence I look, on the one hand unto Paestum, 
and on the other unto Misenum ; and then being done 
with, heat lay down and took a siesta among the 
myrtles, gathered a little posy of anemones and some 
pretty blue flowers I don't know the name of, came 
home and am writing in my room at 8 p.m. without a 
touch of cold or even chill, or the dream of a fire. 
When winter is to come I know not, but we can't get 
within sight of him here as yet. Imperial history is in 
a bad way in Capri. As I grubbed for old pots an old 
woman stopped and said, " Ecco ! a palace of Ti;«berio ! " 
" And who was Timberio ? " I asked with subtlety. 
" Timberio was a Devil," she answered at once, " but 
he is dead and buried." This was hopeful for a Devil, 
so I said I would have a mass said to get him out of 
Purgatory. But the aged dogmatist shook her head. 
" When Christians die," she said, ^^they go to Pur- 
gatory — but when Devils die they go to Hell." So 
I am afraid there is no doing anything for "Timberio." 
I am getting on with my Italian bravely, being tired of 
being dumb, and the Caprese maidens being very 
talkative, very patient of blunders, and — mighty 
pretty ! 

Felice sera, Signor ! J. R. Green. 

Your " Saarburg " arrove with the other derelicts — 
very jolly indeed. 



342 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 



To Mrs. Humphry Ward 

Hotel Quisisana, Isola di Capri, 
January 15, 1873. 

I have just been reading over Humphry's last 
letter again, dear Mary, and fell so terribly a-longing 
for the villa which I have never seen, the new semi- 
grand "by Kaps," the cat and the china, the long 
winter evenings and chats among the knick-knackeries, 
that I had to rush out on to the hillside and bask 
myself into content in the sunshine. It is worrying, 
I know, to be always harping on the sunshine ; but 
really it is one's life here, the one great daily marvel 
and daily joy, this uninterrupted succession of hot 
summer days which drive one in sometimes for shade, 
and which make one sit down — as I did this after- 
noon — every half hour to wipe one's brow and mutter 
" very hot," as one might in the hottest August of 
England. I keep a sun-diary, and I find that since 
the 15th of December, i.e. during a whole month, we 
have had only two cloudy days, and of those one was 
quite warm, nor has there been a drop of rain. The 
days have been blue, cloudless, summer days ; much of 
the fine blue owing no doubt to a slight north wind, 
but that matters nothing here as we are wholly sheltered 
on one side of the island from every wind but the 
South. It is this which makes the Island so greatly 
preferable as a winter station to the Riviera, where 
the sunshine is chequered with biting east and south- 
east winds of truly English quahty, especially in 
March. I shall certainly spend March here — it is 
something to have found a place where one can live 
unscourged by Kingsley's " wind of God." 

I wonder whether Capri will equal the Riviera in 
its spring-burst of flowers ? As yet we have only 
plenty of anemones, and a beautiful blue flower on 
the hills whose name I don't know, and certain 
crocuses in a precipitous spot I haven't ventured to. 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 343 

I shall be almost sorry, I think, if I do find anything 
anywhere to equal that sight of beautiful wonder, the 
sudden flushing of terrace after terrace into bright 
banks of colour which will always be associated in my 
mind with S. Remo. 

Of course I am wonderfully well — in other words 
it is sunshine — but one thing is becoming clearer and 
clearer to me, and that is that I have got to the end 
of my improvement tether. I am a different fellow 
to what I was even a year ago ; but I am afraid I shall 
never be much better than I am, and that I must lay 
aside all hope of what people call " a cure." Increased 
strength seems to bring little ability to face the least 
cold, the least anxiety or over-exertion. It is easier 
than it was of old to pick myself up, but I run down 
just as fast as I ever did. I should have thought little 
of this even a year ago; but like a fool I had begun 
to nurse silly hopes of " being well again," and doing 
as other folk do, and now I find it a little hard to 
face the truth — the truth that I must resign myself if 
I live to the life of an invalid — the {illegible) that is 
so out of harmony with my natural temper. I don't 
grumble — for after all such a life is no obstacle to 
quiet writing, and may perhaps lead one to a truer 
end of life than one had planned. But sometimes 
there comes on me a rebellion against the quiet of the 
student life, a rush of energy and longing to "battle," 
and then it is hard to beat one's wings against the 
cage the Fates have made for one. 

I wonder whether it will end in my settling down 
in some sunny Italian nook, in this Capri for example ? 
If I can never hope to " spend a winter in England," 
which seems likely enough, if I can never return till 
the end of May, and must flit again at the close of 
September — would it not be better to give up the 
notion of an " Enghsh home " altogether, and look 
on England only as a summer holiday run '^. This is 
what my thoughts run on, and the more so because 
with my books in England I am so terribly hampered 



344 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

in writing. I want to bring home my " Little Book " 
finished, and then after " Little France," which will 
take a couple of months I suppose, to plunge fairly 
into the Angevins. But the " Angevins " want a 
library at one's elbow, and in a month or so after 
beginning them would come the order to depart. I 
am very, very puzzled ; how I wish I had married 
long ago, before it was cowardly to think of marrying, 
as it is now I take it. One has no right to ask a 
woman to tie herself to a fellow who must live in 
sunshine. The artists here have a way of marrying 
Caprese donkey-girls and the like, and perhaps I might 
aspire to a donkey-girl. As to beauty she would be 
perfect. I know half a dozen donkey-girls here who 
are more beautiful than any Englishwoman I ever saw. 
I wish you and other people hadn't spoilt me for 
marrying with donkey-girls, and filled me with dreams 
of " cosy chats " and pretty knick-knackeries and a 
grand piano " by Kaps." 

The young parroco comes to me to-night to 
begin my Italian lessons. I am curious to know him, 
for he is evidently an active fellow — a vigorous ultra- 
montane who has forced an " Infallibility " catechism 
into the School in spite of the schoolmistress, who by- 
the-bye told me — "I believe not in God, I believe in 
Matter," — a reformer who has so roused the wrath 
of the easygoing old Canons that on St. Stephen's 
Day they set on him with the big candles in the 
Sacristy vowing they " would make a St. Stephen of 
him," has roused the wrath of the artists by refusing 
to give absolution to any girl who sits as a model, 
and the wrath of the island at large by making war on 
the Tarantella, but with all this has taught himself 
English, has a good library of English Tauchnitzes, 
and is the only man in the island who doesn't rest on 
far niente and the dolcezza thereof. 

He hasnt put down the Tarantella, for the simple 
reason that it is born in the people, and that the 
moment you sing or dance oflT they go in the prettiest, 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 345 

most bewitching dance the sun ever shone on. It is 
amusing to see the little ones begin, and then the spell 
spread to the bronzed fisherman looking on who 
suddenly flings up his arms, and bounds lightly as air 
over the stalwart " Costanza," who puts down her 
great basket from her head and sways from side to 
side in that indescribable way, and then the old women 
begin to clap their hands, and the old men to drum 
in tune on the ground, and every one to laugh, to sing, 
to dance, and so the world goes round. A buon 
gentt these Caprese — as they always call themselves, 
always ready for a joke, a chat, a halfpenny, liking 
best .people who laugh with them, ask after their 
boys' schooling, and carry out the doctrine of equality 
in the practical Italian fashion. 

Good-bye. — Yours aflTectionately, J. R. G. 

To E. A. Freeman 

Hotel Quisisana, Isola di Capri, 

February 7, 1873. 

I am afraid from what you say, dear Freeman, that 
I was a good deal more " cocky " in my notes on the 
proofs than I had meant to be. The truth is one 
writes — at least / write very often in a sort of talkee- 
talkee way, with all the brusque dogmatism of ordinary 
chat, without recollecting how very much more brusque 
and dogmatic words look on paper than when they 
have the living face and voice to serve as a running 
comment on them. But of course — as you took the 
matter — I only meant them as suggestions, and very 
hasty suggestions, and I quite expected that you would 
find some of them wrong and others useless. But 
for any " needless fierceness " I hereby do penance in 
sackcloth and ashes. Moreover I wrap myself in white 
sheets of fancy, and hold tapers of imagination for 
my - silence about your " grandis epistola," with its 
enclosure from Miss Freeman. I thought I had 
mentioned in what a strange fashion, and after what 



346 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

strange delays they reached me. Still they reached me 
to my delight. 

As to the Exeter matter I am very glad of the meet- 
ing there, and still gladder of the resolve to do real 
work instead of the hithering-and-thithering which has 
gone on hitherto. And I needn't say how tempted 
I am by such a subject as the municipal history of 
Exeter. Exeter and Bristol are almost the only Eng- 
lish instances I know where you have the difficulties 
with feudal lords which were so common elsewhere ; 
1 suppose because in the western and south-western 
marches alone did you get lords of a foreign type 
and bigness, and also towns of a bigness to resist them. 
But I don't like doing what I have so often done, 
undertake what I can't perform ; and in the performance 
of such an engagement as this there are many diffi- 
culties. I don't know whether I shall be forced out 
of England again for the winter. My health is far 
better, but still I acquire no power of resisting cold, 
and so Clark may come to the conclusion that 1 must 
again run off at the beginning of October. The 
meeting would probably take place before this, but 
with only some four or five months in England I 
should have no time for " fancy-work." I shall have 
to put Little Book through the press, and to make up 
certain " vacant spaces " which I can't for want of 
books fill in here during the process. Then there is 
the Little France. And then — if there remains any 
time over — I want to collect for my Angevins and 
take out my materials with what I have already in my 
notebooks for putting together in the coming winter. 
You see this is no difficulty of my making, but of 
" Nature's," and if I am again to be an exile I see 
httle chance of an " Exeter " paper. On the other 
hand, if Clark (as I still hope) thinks I may venture 
to try an English winter — say, at Bournemouth — 
there would be no difficulty. But in any case I can 
give no final answer till I return to England, and 
this I don't intend doing till the end of May. 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 347 

I shall probably remain here till the March winds 
have done their blowing, and then spend a month or so 
in Rome, jogging slowly home from thence by Perugia 
and Assisi, stopping at Florence for a peep at Lucca 
and re-peep at Pisa, and then by Parma, Modena, and 
Pavia, jogging along to Milan. Oh, how I wish you 
dear folk in England would take wing and flit over the 
Alps so that I might have you in the sunshine and never 
need tread Fog-and-Freedom-Land again. Why on 
earth did the Teutons get the wrong side of the Alps 
when they might just as well have got the right ? I wish 
I had been with them, — say when they were on the 
Caspian, looking in their Baedekers for the route to the 
West. 

It's very odd here to note the Greek traces not only 
on the physique but on the traditions of the island. 
There is an old church here, — up on Anacapri, — which 
the priests call by some saintly name, but the people 
know as " the old church di Constantinopoli." Con- 
stantine is a common boy's name, — Costanzo being the 
patron saint of Capri and Constantine being recognised 
as " little Costanzo." So too one feels the touch of 
the East in the churches with their domes, not merely 
central domes, but every bay rising domically, — and in 
the house-roofs, which are thoroughly oriental and give 
the town seen from above a look of Jerusalem. They 
vault in an odd but effective way, putting first a rough 
mould of wood, and then piling over it small rough 
stones in a mash of mortar. Then they beat and 
trample the stones in, jamming them together with 
great hammers till the mortar sets and the whole mass 
becomes one stone from wall to wall. They leave it 
a long time to dry, but the result is a perfectly good 
strong vault, and of course a very cheap one. I noticed 
that all the vaulting of the Roman palace of Tiberius 
had been done in this way, and horribly as it has been 
pulled about, it is quite firm and solid still. Why 
wouldn't this do in England, for country churches, and 
for institutions where the risk of fire is great ? 



348 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Another odd thing about Capri is its wonderful 
cheapness. I could take a comfortable house here, 
keep two good servants, have a pleasant garden, and 
spend under ;!^200 a year. One of the inns here gives 
you a good room, board, lights, for six francs a day, 
which at the present rate of paper about equals four 
shillings. They apologised to me for having risen their 
rate, — it was till this year five francs ! Even here with 
a really fine room, southern aspect, and meat three times 
a day, I am only paying 9 francs 50 per diem. I was 
offered a flat of five rooms in the best situation for ^13 
per annum, and found that my servant would count 
herself rich if I gave her board and 10 francs a month, 
about 8s. If Clark won't let me settle in England, I 
really think I shall take off bag and baggage, take a 
little house here, and simply look on England as a place 
for a holiday run in the summer. The summer here is 
more tolerable than elsewhere in South Italy, as there is 
a pleasant sea-breeze which always gets up at about ten 
in the morning and cools the air. 

But don't think I am getting " Italianate," which 
according to Ascham is pretty much the same as "a 
devil incarnate." In some ways I think being far away 
makes one fairer to England than when one is at home 
and worried with all the pettiness and ignorance, " dis- 
cussions over damnatory clauses " and the hke, and 
inclined to believe the Pall Mall and the groaners 
generally about the " contempt for England on the 
Continent." What one really sees on the Continent, 
if one likes to learn from their statesmen and journals 
instead of from the chatter of table d'hbtes^ is the 
immense influence for good which England is just now 
wielding. I see Mr. Fish tells Spain to compare 
England's colonial policy with her own if she wants 
to know how to manage a colony. So in Germany 
" English Constitutionalism " is getting too hard even 
for Bismarck, as his remarkable speech about ministe- 
rial responsibility showed. It was the argument from 
England alone which he cared to answer. So here the 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 349 

influence of France seems to have faded away, — it is 
English order, EngUsh justice, EngHsh self-government 
that Italians are talking about as a model for their own. 
You were vexed (as were the best Italians) with all 
the fuss here about Napoleon. It was not of course so 
inexcusable as the ridiculous maundering at home. The 
real truth is that Italians remember a good deal Louis' 
early Carbonaro days and his brother's death in their 
cause. They believe (I think rightly) that mixed with 
a vast deal of selfish aim there was a real kindliness for 
Italy in his mind in the '59 business ; that his " from the 
Alps to the Adriatic " was a real thought and a good one 
though the Devil came in after Solferino and drove it 
out. Moreover they feel that whether he willed it or 
no, '59 was the beginning of the New Italy. All this 
vapouring too of the French Legislature and of Thiers 
against Italian Unity shows them that no other French 
ruler could have done so much for them as Napoleon 
did, — that no other French ruler who had the power 
he had would have tolerated a united Italy at all. In 
spite of Villafranca and the intrigues in Tuscany and the 
Gaeta business and Rome and Mentone I do think the 
Emperor's Italian side was his best side. Add to this a 
really noble trait in the Italian character which perhaps 
explains more than all those reasons. They have an 
immense gratitude to all who in any way aided them 
in their bad days. When Johnny Russell came to S. 
Remo they wanted to put up triumphal arches. "He 
was a friend when we had few friends." So too Glad- 
stone's is still a great name here, and his "Letter" 
unforgotten. So in spite of Garibaldi's hot words 
against the " Neri " even the " Neri " are proud of Gari- 
baldi. So too the republicans would not depose the 
King who " made Italy." So too the Conservatives 
and the Conservative Chamber passed a solemn vote of 
recognition when Mazzini died, though Mazzini was 
to every Conservative a name which summed up all 
that was terrible. And so with Lewis Napoleon. He 
helped, — it may be against his will, and treacherously 



350 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

and falsely, but he helped to "make Italy." At any 
rate a gratitude of this sort is a different thing from the 
sentimental silliness of English Napoleonism. 

Good-bye. Remember how great a treat a letter 
from Somerleaze always is, and believe me, dear Free- 
man, ever yours, J. R. Green. 

I have had no more proofs, so I suppose I " ain't 
wanted." 

To Mr. and Mrs. Humphry Ward 

Hotel Quisisana, Capri, 
March 4, 1873. 

It is really delightful, my dear Humphry, to get 
apologies from a correspondent for his own silence at 
a time when every post is bringing me remonstrances 
for mine. 

I have come to my last month in Capri : at least I 
intend at present to cross the water at the close of 
March, spend a week or so in doing Paestum, Amalfi, 
Pompeii, and Sibyl-land, and then go on to Rome. 
April and the beginning of May is said to be pleasant 
at Rome, and in this way I shall "dodge" the perver- 
sity which always sets me longing for " home " as soon 
as the spring begins. Not that I long as yet, for my 
winter has passed very happily, in spite of the " inevita- 
bles " of an invalid hotel ; and I love Capri more than 
ever. I wonder whether I shall end by settling there ? 
I have done so well this winter, and I seem to myself 
to have been improving so steadily these last two years 
that Clark may perhaps let me stay in England and 
take work ; but if not, I must clearly make some per- 
manent arrangement for fixing my residence — i.e. my 
books, abroad. I can run to England then every 
summer and make the run my holiday, while what is 
now my " exile " will simply be my ordinary working 
season. If I took some house here and had my books 
with me permanently settled, — with Rome and Florence 
to run to on one's way to and from the North, — life 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 351 

would be fairly tolerable in every other way than the 
social. The present system is ruinous to anything like 
serious work. The mere living in hotels makes it im- 
possible, — and then too there is the vagrant character 
of one's life, which worries and unfixes one. However 
when I come home we can talk this over. If Clark 
will let me stay, say at Bournemouth, I think I should 
feel bound to set aside all pleasant dreams of Italian life; 
not that I cling to England as such, but partly be- 
cause I do cling more and more to certain people in 
England, and partly too because in this way I might 
perhaps patch up my life again to a certain extent, and 
take something like an editorship, etc. On the other 
hand, I feel a certain cowardice about settling again 
fairly at home, now that my opinions have become so 
irreconcilable with my past position and the like. But 
after all accident settles all these things, and I may drift 
along as I have drifted hitherto. 

I have written quite enough to Humphry, dear 
Mary, but how horrible letters are, especially when one 
writes them at night all alone in one's room. How I 
wish I could have you both here cosying down in a 
myrtle thicket for a chat in the sunshine. For the 
sunshine has fairly come back to us now, and our 
winter — that dull month with its rain and wind — has 
fled away again. One soon forgets it now Spring is 
here, and the flowers are out in a flower-shower on the 
hillsides — just as Spring flings them in that lovely 
Florentine picture — orchis and anemone and crocus 
and a host of white blossoms and blue that I don't 
know the name of. We had a dull carnival, for the 
young fisher lads are off coral-fishing on the African 
coast, and there is something too serious in the Caprese 
temper for the true Carnival outbreak of downright 
childish fun. Indeed Carnival is more a religious festa 
than a social one ; and the chief sight was the big 
church at Benediction crammed to the doors, and the 
wandering home of group and group through the 



352 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

dark village, lanthorn in hand — one saw them scat- 
tering like a swarm of fireflies over the dusky valley 
beneath. Love and the Madonna — those are the two 
spiritual sides of the life of a Caprese. I have just 
been shaking hands through the grating of the Town- 
prison on the Piazza with a young sailor, who came 
back to find his loved one coming out of Church from 
her betrothal with a wealthy old contadino. He 
stabbed them both; but both are about again — only 
the contadino thinks better of his intention, and 
the inamorata comes penitently to the prison gate to 
weep out her repentance, and pour kisses on Giovanni's 
hand, — the hand that stabbed her. He is a quiet, nice, 
respectable young fellow, and will soon be out again and 
marry Carmela, and buy a fishing-boat and be a respect- 
able father — die perhaps a Churchwarden, who knows ? 
At any rate, public opinion goes quite with Giovanni, 
and I go as I always go — with public opinion — and so 
we shake hands, and he fills his mouth with " confetti " 
(it is another weakness of his which I humour), and 
laughs and talks to me in broken Italian through the 
bars. As to the Madonna whom we carried about in 
procession the other day to get good weather for the 
coral fishers, and whose hair has unluckily turned red 
in the last dyeing, she is a little waning in religious 
fashion as May draws near and the feast of San 
Costanzo when the Bishop comes over and rides a- 
cock-horse up the hill with the silver image of " II 
Santo Protettore dell' Isola " before him. Costanzo, 
Costanza, Constantino, Constantina, Costanzello, Cos- 
tanzella — half the island is named after " II Protet- 
tore." Nobody knows his own surname. Nicknames 
do instead. "Who is your father?" I ask a boy. 
" Constantin," he replies, " Constantin il bugiardo " 
(Constantine the Liar). Lies don't count for much 
here — simply intellectual diversions. 

Good-bye, you know I am ever, affectionately yours, 

J. R. G. 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 353 

To Mrs. a Court 

Hotel Victoria, Rome, 
April 29, 1873. 

... I felt wonderfully hermit-like yesterday in the 
midst of a Roman mob. It was the birthday of Rome 
— whatever that may mean — the commemoration of 
some Romulus or Remus business ; and so as St. 
Peter's has gone into darkness, and Pio IX. won't 
light up, the government gave us an illumination of 
old Rome. I have never seen anything so majestically 
weird in my life as the view of the Colosseum whether 
within or without — its lower arches one mass of 
crimson fire — its upper tiers all shadowy with pale 
green light. The Sacred Way was lit up in the same 
fashion, and then came the turn of the Forum — a sea 
of Dante-like lurid flame in which the great fragments 
and pillars and arches rose up pale and aghast as they 
must have arisen out of the great conflagration in 
which Nero looked down and fiddled. It was won- 
derfully sublime, but my interest lay rather with the 
crowd than with the sublimities. 

It was so odd to see a huge crowd again in the 
desolate, solitary old Rome after all these centuries, 
since Cicero complained of the mob along the Sacred 
Way — to see the Colosseum buzzing again with twenty 
thousand Romans, and a great throng squeezing 
through the arch of Titus ! and a very pretty sight, too, 
as well as an odd one, for the contrast between a 
Roman mob and an English one is very pretty indeed. 
Nobody crowded, nobody squeezed, nobody rushed. 
We all moved gravely, quietly, as if we were walking 
in Church. There was none of the chatter of a French 
crowd, or of the rough horseplay of an English. I 
think it is this innate gravity of the Southern temper 
which has struck me most in it, whether here or at 
Capri ; it is this which gives the gentleman-like stamp 
(I can hardly use any other phrase) to the roughest 
fisher or the commonest trasteverino. 



354 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

You see your kind hope is realised, and I am 
managing to get infinite delight out of Rome. How 
lovely the spring is here! My pleasantest days have 
been spent in the Campagna. I had no notion I 
should care for it, and I love it. I had always shrunk 
from it as something dreary and uncanny (I don't Hke 
dreary things), and instead of this I find it a great 
broad reach of rolling down, scarred with tombs, 
aqueducts, arches, but carpeted with such deep grass, 
and crimsoned with flowers. It was deHghtful to fling 
oneself down well out in the open, with Rome hanging 
like a dream in the distance, and far off^ the white snow 
line defining the Sabine range against the pure blue — 
to see the wild figures of the bufl^aloes tugging at the 
heavy yoke on the desolate road, or, above to see my 
first eagle soaring over the soil of his own Rome. 
Imagine fortune having reserved me for this at thirty- 
five ! 

I brighten up at the very thought of a really merry 
companion. Why are people so grave, so solemn, so 
afraid of laughter, of fun, of irony, of quiz, of non- 
sense in all its delicious forms ? Do you remember how 
much we laughed together in the San Remo days.'' I 
don't feel a bit penitent when I think of all the extrava- 
gance and nonsense I talked, but I get little chance 
of talking nonsense and extravagances here. People 
pound you with picture-galleries and basilicas, and 
frown down a joke by inquiring your opinion as to the 
true site of the Temple of Concord. 

I wonder whether there will be another world 
where the people will be very amusing? It might 
make up a little for this. 

To Miss von Glehn 

4 Beaumont Street, 
August 2, 1873. 

My life has been wholly spent in wissits, Oh dear, 
but thoughtless friend ! I came home with sober 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 355 

purpose of sticking to my books like a leech, and lo ! 
my friends make a murmuring, and those that love 
me have lift up their head. Seriously, dear Olga, I 
have been working very hard to get my book off my 
hands, and have led a very hermit-like life among 
" Reformations " and " Great Rebellions " till I do 
really see light. I have now only about a chapter and 
a half to do, so far as writing goes, and about half the 
book is in type, and the rest printing fast. But then 
there are maps and " Chronological Tables " to finish 
up with, which my soul loatheth. That good little 
Madeline Ward took pity on me to-day, and promised 
to try her hand at the latter, and as for the Maps I 
think I shall stick in anything — say that of Abyssinia, 
and letter it beneath " Very Early England indeed," 
and so on. 

Why you should assume that I am "well and 
happy, aye more happy than most people " passes my 
knowledge. What have I done that you should turn 
on me in that fashion, dear friend ? Happiness is a 
very odd thing, and I think Providence distributes it 
over the world as the printers distribute commas over 
a proof — without any special sense or propriety in the 
distribution. With me. Happiness means simply a 
Home and a wife and some wee things ; if I don't get 
these I don't care for anything else, except a few 
friends and a little sunshine. And H. and W. and 
W. T. I shan't get. I was out a-walking t'other 
night in the Park, and all the counter-jumpers were 
there, each with a counter-jumperess on his arm ! 
And I longed for once to be a counter-jumper. As it 
is, I must put up for the wee while they call life with 
being like Gibbon — do you remember the Duke of 
Cumberland's pretty speech to him ? " How d'ye do, 
Mr. Gibbon, still doing nothing but scribble, scribble, 
scribble, I suppose ? " 

I ran down to see Freeman at Somerleaze for a few 
days, which has been my one hoHday since I visited 
you. . .' . They live in a pretty part of Somerset — 



2S6 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

just the broken green misty scenery which strikes one 
as so peculiarly English, after one has been much 
abroad ; with Wells and its great Minster lying in a 
hollow beneath them, and Glastonbury a short drive 
off across the flats. Freeman gave us a fine preach- 
ment over the Abbey and its ruins, and I earwigged 
the organist at the Cathedral, and got him to play me 
a lot of Mendelssohn's organ music after everybody 
was gone (the great Cathedral seemed so grand when 
one was all alone there with the music rolling away 
down the nave), — so 1 didn't do badly. 

Clark tells me I mustn't hope to spend this coming 
winter or the next in England ; which " cast me into a 
swound " for a while, as 1 thought I was really better, 
but it can't be helped. It will be a great thing to get 
wee Book off my hands before I go. I must take out 
a little " France " to do for that by way of money- 
making ; and I want to throw into shape this winter 
two small books — one of Essays on Oxford History, 
the other of my Italian Sketches. I should make up 
the first of the Papers on Early Oxford I wrote in 
Macmillan^ a paper on Oxford in the Great Rebellion, 
and another on Puritan Oxford — both of which I have 
got to write — and close with two long papers on 
" Oxford Society in the Eighteenth Century," and 
" the Oxford Jacobites " which I wrote when I was 
an undergraduate. As for Italy, Macmillan wants me 
much to give him simply the papers I have written ; 
but I don't mean to do so till I have added some 
more — say on " Verona," "The Florence of Dante," 
" Roman History in the Forum and on the Palatine," 
Assisi, Amalfi — at least these with my Riviera sketches 
to begin with, the Capri papers to end with, and the 
papers on Italian Society and religion I have written 
from time to time to vary them would make a pleasant 
and perhaps useful little book. 

But these are by-plays. My real hope now 
Little Book is over is to begin Big Book. The 
"History of the Great Charter" is the title I have 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 



357 



fixed upon — in three vols — from the death of Henry 
the First to the death of Simon of Montfort. I don't 
think it will be as original a thing as my Little Book, 
but people measure one very much more by the size 
of one's book than by its intrinsic value, and you must 
publish in " three volumes octavo " to be a great 
historian. 

Good-bye. — Ever your friend, J. R. G. 

To E. A. Freeman 

4 Beaumont Street, W., 
September i6, 1873. 

[Thomas, Lord Seymour, was beheaded March 20, 
1 549-] 

Many thanks, my dear Freeman, for the review and 
your notes of this morning. Even if I am unable to 
follow you in all of them, you are doing me a great 
service in warning me of so fatal a danger as the one 
you point out, — that most of what I say "will have 
no meaning save to people who already have a know- 
ledge of the matter a good deal above the average." 
It is the danger which has beset the book all through, 
and from which I thought I was freeing myself, but it 
seems that my effort was a failure. However, I will 
still try on. As to style, what you say about " plu- 
perfects " is quite just, and I have been striking out 
all I could on the final revises. So, too, Haweis has 
pointed out to me the faults of over-emphasis and 
"apposite sentences" I am so apt to fall into. The 
book is full of faults of this kind, which make one 
feel almost hopeless of ever learning to write well. 

But there are other "faults," — if faults they are, — 
which I can hardly correct unless I wholly alter my 
conception of the book, and indeed of history. One 
is the suppression or omission of facts which appear to 
me to have ilo historic value. Thus you ask "when 



358 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

do you kill T. Seymour ? " I -purposely left him out 
altogether. His intrigue and death have in my mind 
no bearing whatever on the general current of our his- 
tory. If I were writing a great history in detail — say 
eight volumes or so — it might be fairly urged that, as 
one can hardly tell what facts will in the end turn out 
to be important, it is better to put in too many than 
too few. But in so brief a story as mine a selection 
has to be made, whether or no ; some things must be 
left out; and I have endeavoured to leave out episodes 
like Tommy Seymour, with a full consciousness that 
nine readers out of ten (from sheer habituation to those 
in other histories) will suppose I have forgotten them. 

In the same way the " putting things out of their 
place " means, I suppose, putting things out of the 
place they have hitherto occupied in common histories. 
But then my plan is in many ways different from that 
of common histories. Then (whether rightly or 
wrongly, don't matter here) I have made a wholly new 
epoch — which I choose (again rightly or wrongly) to 
call the " Reformation " — begin towards the end of 
Henry VIII.'s reign with the Law of the Six Articles. 
That is to say, I hold that at that time a certain form 
of religious and moral thought calling itself Protestant- 
ism, which had till then been confined to a small sec- 
tion of the nation, began more and more to get hold 
of the nation at large, and produced in the period that 
followed very weighty results on its history. But to 
make the origin of this mode of thought clear I have 
to go back some way into the former period, and so 
to give an appearance of over-lapping and confusion 
and putting things out of their places. But i^ ray plan 
be right, they are in their places ; and if my plan is 
wrong, then the book is wrong from beginning to end. 

I have always said to myself that it is quite possible 
the book may utterly fail, and that I ought not to 
grumble if it does. I give English History in the only 
way in which it is intelligible or interesting to me, but 
it does not follow that others will find my rendering of 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 359 

it interesting or intelligible. Then again : there is such 
a just aversion to "philosophies of history " on account 
of the nonsense which has passed under that name, 
that it is quite likely people may turn away from a story 
which strives to put facts on a philosophical basis, and 
to make events the outcome of social or religious 
currents of thought. Then too others may quite fairly 
feel that, however interesting the attempt to work in 
literary and moral influences may be, it is safer and less 
confusing to stick to a purely pohtical mode of viewing 
things. I put aside of course the yet larger number 
of people who will condemn it as " superficial," because 
it is picturesque ; or as partisan in its tone, because no 
party finds itself really represented in its pages. For a 
failure on these latter grounds I shouldn't care a straw; a 
failure on the other grounds would be a far heavier blow, 
but it is one which would not take me by surprise, and 
which I certainly should have no right to grumble at. 

Securus judicat orbis terrarum and I have been 
wrong so often during this life of mine in great con- 
clusions which seemed to me at the time irrefragable, 
that it is quite possible I am wrong in Little Book. 
It is the one advantage of being a sceptic that one is 
never very surprised or angry to find that one's oppo- 
nents are in the right. 

It is partly thoughts of this sort which have made 
me linger so long over Little Book. I am fond of it in 
a way, and I don't want to turn it out on to the world 
and see it kicked down the gutter. I tell you them 
now because I want you to see that I do appreciate your 
criticisms, and that if I don't always follow your advice 
it is because Little Book (having been conceived in sin) 
won't always let me. 

I am slowly mending, — there is no return of haemor- 
rhage, but my chest is in a bad way, and unluckily my 
doctor is out of town. Physically I am weaker and more 
depressed in spirits than I have been for a long time. 

Good-bye. — Ever yours, dear Freeman, 

J. R. G. 



36o LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

To E. A. Freeman 

4 Beaumont Street, W. 

[Freeman makes some remarks upon the following 
in a letter to Miss Thompson of January 25, 1874, 
published in his Life, vol. ii. p. 79.] 

I have just read your answer to my " cavils," dear 
Freeman, — " cavil " I just notice in passing being, so 
far as my experience goes, a mere name for an argument 
when it pinches one. I only wrote one word on that 
and on your letter, — a word of protest against any sup- 
posed "theological" bearing of my opinion on the sub- 
ject. The question between us is a strictly historical 
one. It is simply whether history is to deal only with 
one set of facts and documents relating to a period, or 
with all the facts and documents it can find. 

On the legal continuity of the Church of England 
Hook says nothing half so forcible as the unbroken row 
of Registers on the Lambeth shelves. But we possess 
another set of documents equally continuous, those 
which record the presentations to livings. Stubbs 
pointed out to me long ago that you might read these 
through and hardly guess that any ecclesiastical change 
had accompanied the Great Rebellion. There are verbal 
differences, but not more extensive than those which 
appear in the extant Consecration Deed of Parker. 
The matter is simple enough, — a registrar or lawyer 
whose daily business is drawing up documents by prece- 
dent alters just as little as he can, and of course under 
Elizabeth there were grave political reasons why Queen 
and Primate were at one in this matter with the lawyer. 
But that even this matter of the identity of legal docu- 
ments must not be pushed too far Parker's own Conse- 
cration Deed is fair proof It is remarkable with what 
care and minuteness it records the significant changes in 
the Consecration Service, — but you no doubt know it. 

Making however these allowances, there is, no 
doubt — and was meant to be — a legal continuity in the 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 361 

English Church under Elizabeth, and so far as its inner 
condition goes, some sort of identity with the pre- 
Reformation church. But compare 1480 with 1580, 
and set the church of the one time fairly against that of 
the other. In the one case we have an ecclesiastical 
body forming a member of a sort of federation of 
similar bodies united under the supremacy (really under 
the actual rule) of the Pope, with a legislature of its 
own, exemption in many points from the common law, 
independent power of decreeing dogmas and enforcing 
them by its own courts, and the like. In the other, its 
outer political form is utterly changed ; it is isolated in 
Christendom ; while within its immunities and inde- 
pendence are utterly destroyed. In a purely political 
sense can we deny that a great change has taken place — 
or that this change was what people have called from 
that day to this, the Reformation ^ Then, too, looking 
strictly as an historian to the religious opinions of the 
English people at the two epochs, I see a change even 
greater than the outer constitutional change in the aspect 
of the Church — and I know no name for this change 
but the same one of the Reformation. 

Now whether the Church was the same Church or 
no, or whether the opinions at either period were right 
or wrong, is as you say no question for an historian, 
and I may add personally, is of no possible importance 
to me. All I care about is the fact of the change, — and 
of the double change. And this fact I do repeat your 
little book absolutely ignores. 

No doubt Parker and still more Bancroft strove to 
minimise the outer constitutional appearance of change. 
But no two people were more conscious that a great 
change had taken place. Their steady use of the term 
" Reformed " as the epithet for the Church of England, 
is quite enough to prove this when one remembers that 
the word was then used strictly in its technical sense, as 
expressing the fact that England took a definite place as 
one of the Cahinistic churches (as we say nowadays) 
with those of the Continent. As to their consciousness 



362 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

of an internal change, it is true that Parker and Cecil 
went to mass under Mary, but it is also true that 
they both denounced " mass " as " idolatry," and made 
attendance at it a crime under Elizabeth. 

In reality Hook can only support his theory by 
resolutely ignoring the whole private correspondence of 
the time. The question is strictly whether Parker and 
certain other persons believed that they were at one 
with Churches which had undoubtedly been " pulled 
down and set up again," and the answer to this question 
is simply that they did. In the four volumes of the 
Zurich letters — in the correspondence of Calvin — in 
that of Knox — one may see on what intimate terms of 
communion and common interest the statesmen and 
churchmen of England believed themselves to stand with 
the Calvinistic (I say nothing of the Lutheran) Churches 
in Scotland and abroad. On the other hand, their hatred 
and dread of the unreformed churches of Italy, Spain, 
etc., needs no quotations from letters. But the strong- 
est evidence for both these beHefs is to be found in the 
public words of Elizabeth herself 

You by your silence deny that such a thing as the 
Reformation ever took place. EHzabeth, Cecil, Parker, 
again and again assert it to have taken place. The 
question is between you and the men of the Reforma- 
tion Epoch, — not between you and me. 

I am only this moment back from Oxford. Stubbs 
was dehghtful. More when we meet. — Ever yours, 
dear Freeman, J. R. Green. 

Thanks for the Bede lecture which has just arrived. 
To E. A. Freeman 

4 Beaumont Street, W., London, 
October 30, 1873. 

Wasn't it at Abbeville, dear Freeman, that we two 
saw (years ago) the announcement of a new drama, 
called " The Tower of London " which began thus : 

Act. I. Adam and Eve ? 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 2^3 

Well, I send you something which beats thai all to 
shivers. Conceive the " Exciting Scene between Fair 
Rosamond, King Henry, and Thomas a-Beckett," and 
remember that the three are on horseback. Oh, 
murther, as the Irishmen say, that I daren't go out of 
nights and see the pretty dear a-exciting the Monarch 
and the Primate. 

I love Italy too well not to envy you your Italian 
sunshine. Here the winter is fast closing in. Yester- 
day it was fog all day, and I was a prisoner from morn 
till eve. I felt very odd for it was just three years since 
I had seen a fog, and it looked very uncanny. How- 
ever I keep fairly well by dint of staying indoors 
whenever there isn't downright sunshine. Of course 
going to Oxford is just as impossible as if I were at 
Capri, so your services as Examiner still demand my 
gratitude. But fog or no fog it is very pleasant to 
stay among one's books. Just now, as the proofs of 
my Little Book come in so slowly, I am pushing for- 
ward into certain parts of the bigger one that is to be ; 
and this morning I got wild over the historical schools 
which go on under Henry the First, the story of 
which I mean to give. The Worcester school you 
ought to have said a lot about in Vol. I. of N. C, and 
with a little dexterity you might have dragged in all 
the story of the Chronicle; but you people who "delight 
in war " never care for anything but drums and 
trumpets ! However you are better than the rest, for 
you do take an interest in two other things besides, to 
wit, bishops and strumpets. 

And so you are really at Rome ! Isn't it a place, 
just ? I was out and about for a month and a half in 
it, and there are a lot of things I have still to see. 
One thing which struck me very much, and which 
none of the books make much fuss about, not even 
Gregorovius, is what they call the House of Rienzi, 
by the temple of Fortuna Virilis and that of Vesta 
(I take the popular names of both, for nobody knows 
exactly what to call anything in Rome), but which by 



364 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Gregorovius's account seems to be the house of Cres- 
centius. At any rate it is a very remarkable bit of 
early mediaeval domestic architecture of tenth century 
date or so, and the only one (I think) in Rome. It is 
built up out of bits of older work, — say the books, — 
but to my eye a good deal of the ornamental work in 
the cornice seemed good Middle-Age imitation of the 
older mouldings, and very curious as showing how the 
classical forms passed into the later. This however 
was mere guess-work of course, only I want you to 
look at it. The best bit is up a side passage, which 
stinketh horribly. Don't forget to go a pilgrimage to 
the English places, — S. Gregorio on the Colline, and 
the Church of John and Paul close by (whose outer 
apse I think one of the most effective things in Rome), 
and whose " portico with classic columns and Ionic 
capitals," says Hemans, is the one bit of work in Rome 
which was set up by our Pope, Hadrian IV. There 
are some odd little English traces here and there about 
Rome that the guide-books pass by. As for the " Schola 
Saxonum " there is the church, but all modern it seems 
to me. Still it is pretty, so go and see it. 

Concerning the French book, I don't like to be 
piggish and cantankerous, and Macmillan seems to be 
very worried over it. Moreover I have not the least 
objection to your conditions, to " tell the facts, and 
not slang people who are alive or just dead." But 
" telling facts " may mean very different things with 
different people ; and what I want to avoid is any 
possibility of any disagreement between you and me, 
inasmuch as I count " goodwill on earth " of more 
value than all Little-Frances. So I had better say 
what my difficulty is. As you see in my own Wee- 
Book, I think moral and intellectual facts as much 
facts for the historian as military or political facts ; and 
if I deal with them at all (and deal with them I must 
if I write at all) I must deal with them much as I 
dealt with them in Little Book. That is to say, I 
can't muddle them up in corners always — as Miss 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 365 

Thompson does (though I have just said in .S". R. that 
I think her Hterary bits far the best things in her 
England)^ but shall sometimes have to deal with 
them as of greater importance than anything else. 
Now I know, dear Freeman, that you will let me have 
my own way so far as you can ; but you must judge 
for yourself whether you can bear to have " Little 
France" written on the same principles on which I 
have writ my England, and if you can't you had 
better give it over to Hunt. If you can, I will take 
it. But then you mustn't groan over the " Poets " 
and so on, because the " Poets " and so on are sure 
to turn up. Of course you can keep a tight hand over 
me and see I leave out nothing you think essential ; 
but you must sometimes put up with my putting in 
things you don't think essential. However " dixi." If 
you honestly would Hke me to write " Little F." as I 
have writ " Little E." (only on a much Httler scale), 
then I will write it. 

The more Italian middles the better. I suppose 
you have sent one in on Verona. Let me know if 
you have when you write. As to Rome, one might 
write for ever, but what I hope you will do is to tell 
me something about its Romanesque architecture. 
Certainly, it struck me when I was there that one got 
a succession of " transitional " instances from Roman 
to Romanesque such as one got nowhere else — but then 
one wanted an interpreter. Murray says naught ; and 
Hemans gave little help. — Ever yours, 

J. R. Green. 

To Miss von Glehn 

4 Beaumont Street, W., London, 
November 6, 1873. 

What an amusing little person Mrs. A. is ! She is 
so clever — she knows so many odd things — and knows 
nothing of so many common ones. I was talking to 
her of the scenery of the Tiber, — " Where is the 



266 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Tiber?" she asked a little pettishly at last. " I know 
it is somewhere in Italy ! " with a little stamp of the 
foot ! " I am getting so interested in the Renaissance," 
she said plaintively the other day, " it is the most 
interesting period in History ; but I never can re- 
member where it comes ! " She is never idle, and 
finishes nothing. The portrait of C. is unfinished, 
her bust of D. wants, and probably will always want, 
the last touches ; she began a series of papers on dress, 
and broke off" at the end of the second. " I don't care 
for novels," she said frankly, " because all the interesting 
things come at the end, and I never get to the end." 
"Does she dress well?" she broke out as I was 
praising a girl I knew. " Of course there are other 
points I should like to know about, but fbat is what I 
always judge by." " I wish C. would train me," she 
said the other day, folding her hands in a childHke 
way ; " I need training if my mind is ever to be worth 
anything ; but then I have no will and no appHcation, 
and I get tired of everything in two minutes, and so 
C. gets tired of me." I laugh, but I like the Httle dash 
of genius about her ; her freedom from the common- 
place, her contempt for all the big phrases and tall 
talk which Carlyle and his set have set going in the 
bulk of people. " Of course one must do one's work 
in the world," I heard a Miss H. say to her in a 
tone of papal dogmatism. " Why ? " asked Mrs. A., 
looking up as if she never heard so ridiculous a state- 
ment before. " I don't see how one could live if one 
didn't feel that," replied Miss H. severely. " It is 
very hard to live," rephed Mrs. A. pensively, " but you 
know Cook's tickets help you so much ! " Miss H. 
turned away, and whispered to her next neighbour 
something about " a Uttle fool," but Mrs. A. has more 
wits in her little finger than a thousand Miss H.'s. 
Her phrase about Mrs. B. in the course of her de- 
scription of her to me was perfect. " She is a very 
strong woman — not in her head, you know ! " and 
then afterwards, " She is very sensible, but like most 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 367 

sensible people that I have ever met, not very wise." 
** I wonder," she ended, " whether / shall ever get a 
little common sense. If I do," she added very slowly 
and resolutely, " I hope I shall die ! " 

I have just begun Paradise Lost again, partly for 
the delight of reading it in a most exquisite edition, a 
reprint of the First Edition which came out a little 
while ago, and which I got before my economical re- 
solve not to increase my library. One or two things 
in this reprint are curiatis enough. In the first place, 
instead of the tweU'^b books to which one is used 
it is in ten. It was only in the edition issued just 
before his death that Milton divided the Seventh and 
Tent'h Books of his poem (as originally issued) each 
into two books, adding a few lines to the opening of 
the new Eighth and Twelfth. Then, too, the orthog- 
raphy is very curious. Milton seems, blind as he 
was, to have been particular about it ; for instance he 
inserts in the last edition published in his lifetime an 
erratum " for * we ' read * wee.' " He seems to have 
used the forms " wee," " hee," or " shee," whenever he 
was laying stress on the words. Indeed his spelling 
seems to have been dictated very much by rhythmical 
consideration ; " Rhene " and " Danaw " are instances, 
I think. Reading out the First Book all through at a 
sitting this afternoon, I was a good deal struck with 
the great inequality of the poem. From the grand 
picture of the fallen Satan one passes to what seems 
to me the very dull enumeration of the idol gods 
of Palestine, and then one rises afresh to the muster 
of the ruined angels to fall again to the building of 
Pandaemonium, and the shrinking of the giant daemon 
forms into pygmies to find room within it. I own 
this touch strikes me as ludicrous and incongruous to 
the last degree : but the whole of the metal-casting 
and building business of the close of the book is 
dreadfully prosaic. But setting aside the more obvious 
points of interest, I felt more and more the vast force 
which sweeps together into one great stream all the 



368 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

raised current of Milton's mind, his youthful memo- 
ries of the romances of chivalry, of Charlemain and 
Agramant, the recollections of his ItaHan journeys, 
of Fiesole and Vallombrosa, his general and rather odd 
reading, as in the case of the Kraken outstretched 
many a rood, the sights he saw in his London home, 
the marshalling of the soldiers or the uproar of the 
streets at night, and all that legendary and Talmudic 
lore which has become so familiar to us that (as in his 
whole story of the Battle of the Fallen Angels with 
God) half England believes it to be somewhere in the 
Bible. 

After dinner Brooke and Edward Hawkins came in, 
and we had a jolly talk over the late Union dinner, and 
a lot of Oxford things. Jowett it seems entertained at 
his lodge. Archbishop Tait, Canon Oakeley of Islington, 
and Capes, — Romanist, no Churchman, and the head of 
the Anglican Episcopate. Tait and Manning met and 
shook hands in Balliol Lodge ! Lowe was asked down, 
but said he " wasn't good enough to go." Hawkins 
said he went once with a deputation to Lowe on the 
subject of adulterations. The particular subject of com- 
plaint was damaged figs, which a firm in the City were 
using for all manner of purposes. Lowe replied 
gravely that all the forces of the Government should be 
placed at their disposal to suppress the breach of law ; 
" but," he added sotto voce^ " speaking as a private per- 
son^ I can only say that I regard the man who turns 
rotten figs into raspberry jam as a benefactor of man- 
kind ! " Brooke brought a story of old Balliol days 
which Jowett had told him apropos of Sir John Cole- 
ridge. He was a wonderfully vain undergraduate ; and 
little Jenkins, who was then Master of Balliol, deter- 
mined to tell him so. When he came up at Collections 
— the examination held at the end of the term — Jenkins 
gravely asked each of the Tutors in turn what was their 
opinion of Mr. Coleridge ? They said flattering things, 
and then Jenkins turned on the blushing youth. " Mr. 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 369 

Coleridge ! Mr. Tait has a very high opinion of you. 
Mr. Woolcombe has a very high opinion of you. In- 
deed all the Tutors seem to have a very high opinion 
of you." Then he said meditatively, " I too have a 
high opinion of Mr. Coleridge! But there is one 
person who has a far higher opinion of Mr. Coleridge 
than either I or Mr. Tait or the rest of the Tutors, — 
and that person is Mr. Coleridge himself! " 



J. R. Green. 



To 



Now I think that if you would have looked on 
culture, not as the mere study of "literature" which 
withdrew you from " your work," but as such a gradual 
entering into the spirit of the highest thought the world 
has ever produced as enables us rightly to know what 
the value of all work, and our work among it, really is, 
— if every day you had read a bit of Shakespeare or a 
bit of Dante or a bit of Montaigne, for instance, then 
you would not have ceased to love Madame Roland, but 
you would have reserved the fiery enthusiasm you have 
for her for characters of higher order. Like all the 
characters of the French Revolution she impresses one 
by her earnestness, her unselfishness, a certain grandeur 
of tone and absence of pettiness, a sense of active power, 
a wonderful energy. These are traits she shares with 
Danton or Robespierre or the Girondins. Like them 
too she has an individuahty, a freshness of feeling, a faith 
in the future and in man, a personal kindliness and 
inner simplicity which is touching enough. Her outer 
note of distinction among them is that she is a great 
writer, which none of the rest were, though each had a 
separate note of greatness, and her inner note of dis- 
tinction is that she was a woman. As a woman she has 
with all her power to stand apart from all known and 
active part in the great struggle which was her life, to 
influence it through others, to look on like a Prometheus 
chained at the changes of the world. This is just the 



370 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

sort of position which has a natural and tragic pathos in 
it, and it is not only a pathos which her life inspires in 
every reader but which it inspired in Madame Roland 
herself. Add to this a woman's tenderness, mother's 
love, passion, — and we have a great and dramatic figure 
which has always charmed the world, and should always 
charm it. But with the merits of her time she has its 
faults. She is the child of Plutarch and Rousseau. 
Her creed of political and social faith, though it was 
life and death to her, is merely the string of silly para- 
doxes which Rousseau built up into a revolutionary 
philosophy, — original innocence of man, — original 
equality of the race, — social contracts, — human perfecti- 
bility, — and the like. Hollow ideas of this sort found 
congenial expression in the hollow rhetoric of Plutarch, 
the child of great " decadence." Nothing in the world 
is so intolerable as the taste for " phrases " which their 
study of Plutarch gave to the French Revolutionists. 
Her own is perhaps the most human phrase of all : 
" Oh liberty, how many crimes are committed in thy 
name ! " I always felt a little satisfaction in remember- 
ing that this fine phrase was directed to a Plaster-of- 
Paris Liberty ! a sham statue that had been run up " for 
effect " by David or somebody of the same stage- 
artist sort. But setting this aside, how merely imitative 
it is ! There are scores of rhetorical phrases of this sort 
in Plutarch, in orations of the later Greek rhetoricians 
when they took to turning great names into themes for 
declamation, and big as they look they are the easiest 
things in the world to turn out when once the knack is 
caught. And it is imitative in death. I doubt whether 
an instance can be found of any really great person who 
died with a sounding phrase of this sort on his lips, and 
that for a very simple reason, that with the very great 
soul the mystery of life and death leaves no room for 
the sense of an " audience " which phrases of this kind 
spring from. Compare Joan of Arc's words as she 
looked for the last time over the city which was burn- 
ing her : " Oh, Rouen, Rouen, I have great fear lest 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 371 

you should suffer for my death," — or Sir Thomas 
More's " Do not hurt my beard ; that hath never com- 
mitted treason ! " or Nelson's " Kiss me, Hardy," or 
Goethe's " More Hght." How strangely different all, 
and yet all how like in this that they are words of the 
inner spirit to the inner spirit of the dying one himself, 
— that they have no rhetorical or stagey turn about 
them, no sense of an audience. But the rhetorical, forced 
tone is not merely in the language of the time. It is 
in the characters too. Everybody and Madame among 
them is draping and acting, consciously or unconsciously. 
With the cry of " Nature " on their lips, nobody is 
natural. And as a sign of it nobody laughs. All 
hum'our disappears. Earnestness without culture, with- 
out the sense of proportion, without the humour which 
often supplies the want of a sense of proportion, without 
any real inteUigence of men or things gained either by 
experience or education of a real sort, — this is what 
made the French Revolution so terrible a farce, so 
ridiculous a tragedy. And of all this Madame Roland 
was a type, a type beautiful in many ways but still a 
true type. With all her power and intensity she is 
without poetry, without genius. The true way to 
rightly estimate her is to compare her with those people 
who were living in her day and looking on with her at 
the storm of the Revolution, — Goethe, Wordsworth, 
Mirabeau. All these were men of genius, — even 
Mirabeau, blurred and blotted as his genius was. All 
three went in their inmost souls with the Revolution. 
But with how different an enthusiasm from that of 
Madame Roland. 

To 

4 Beaumont Street, W., London, 

November 7, 1873. 

[Taine's account of Tennyson does not quite corre- 
spond to this.] 

Frank Palgrave whose wife is out of town has been 
spending an hour with me, and has left behind one 



372 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

very characteristic story of M. Taine. Did you ever 
read his History of English Literature ? He was visit- 
ing England to get information for his last volume 
and especially about Tennyson, and it was about 
Tennyson he began talking to Palgrave, who is a 
great friend of the Laureate. " Wasn't he in early 
youth rich, luxurious, fond of pleasure, self-indulgent ? " 
he asked. " I see it all in his early poems — his riot, 
his adoration of physical beauty, his delight in jewels, 
in the abandonment of all to pleasure, in wine, 

and " " Stop, stop ! " said Palgrave, out of all 

patience, " as a young man Tennyson was poor — he 
had little more than j[,\oo a year, his habits were as 
they still are simple and reserved, he cared then as he 
cares now for little more than a chat and a pipe, he 
has never known luxury in your sense ; and if his 
early poems are luxurious in tone, if they are full of 
beautiful women and pearls and gold and what not, 
it is because he is a poet and gifted with a poet's 
imagination." M. Taine bit his lip, thanked him for 
his information, went home — and when the book came 
out Tennyson was found still painted as the young 
voluptuary, the rich profligate, of M. Taine's fancy. 
The story is really an index to the whole character of 
his book. 

It has been raining all day. This is my second day 
of utter imprisonment and I don't take kindly to my 
prison. I think of Capri and the hours among its 
myrtles and the great reaches of luminous air ; and I 
pace up and down my little room like a caged lion. I 
have been re-reading George Sand's Lucrezia Floriani 
and its continuation, Le Chateau des Deserts. Do you 
know the first? — it is one of her greatest works — a 
description, so Liszt says, of her liaison with Chopin. 
It is at any rate a wonderful study of the two types of 
loving souls — Lucrezia with her series of lovers, and 
yet her great and all-embracing love for each in turn 
— and the Prince with the intensity of his single love. 
Can you not get the book from a library at Mentone ? — 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 373 

it is so curiously illustrative of other things. I wonder 
whether you will see what I mean ? 



To Miss von Glebn 

Macmillan and Co., 
29 & 30 Bedford Street, 
CovENT Garden, W.C., 
Olga's Birthday. 

You see why I write, dear Olga ; just to wish you 
all the good wishes which are always in my heart when 
I think of you, and above all when I think of your 
birthday. A great lot of kindness and love was born 
on that day, dear friend ; and I, poor I, with a good 
many other folk, have a good right to keep it as a 
Saint's Day and a Holiday! 

I never wrote to you on a birthday before, fortu- 
nately I remember the day to-day. Sometimes the 
thought of the years that have gone is a sad and an 
oppressive one — but yet withal how many sweet 
memories the thought of them brings with it, and 
sweetest of all perhaps the thought of real friendships 
which let the changing years go by unchanged. That 
is our friendship, dear Olga, and in spite of all my 
silences and absences my friendship for you never 
wavers, and the memory of all your kind words and 
deeds never grows faint. 

Good-bye. J. R. G. 

To E. A. Freeman 

4 Beaumont Street, W., 
January i8, 1874. 

[The Archeology of Rome^ by John Henry Parker 
(i 806-1 884), appeared in 1 1 vols., 1 872-1 880.] 

You were quite right, dear Freeman, in picking me 
up about Parker. His book hasn't come to me for 
S. R.\ but I have been reading at it a little, and in 



374 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

spite of its marvellous arrangement or no-arrangement 
it strikes me as by far the most important contribu- 
tion to early Roman history that has appeared as yet. 
What P. should have done, I think, was to put aside 
all the documentary evidence, and to show first of all 
what his ditches and cliffs and stones proved by them- 
selves. They seem to me to prove a good deal. First, 
they prove the separate towns on the Palatine and the 
Capitoline. Then their union and the wall round 
them to the Tiber, then the annexation or union with 
them of the separate village towns on the hills about 
them, and their inclusion in a second common wall 
whose character shows the importance and labour power 
of the new state. Then within this come the great 
architectural and drainage works ; the buildings of the 
^rarium and Record Office in front of the Capitol 
which must have been coeval with the drainage of the 
two marshes which became the Circus and the Forum, 
and which again were coeval with the Pulchrum Littus 
and the Cloaca Maxima. All this seems to me as 
clearly made out in point of succession as a proposition 
in Euclid ; but a good deal follows from it. Thus 
there is the advance in building-art, the difference 
between the Palatine wall and the (so-called) Servian, 
and especially the use of iron-clamps in the latter. 
But of greater importance is the difference of the 
stone used. The Palatine wall is exclusively of tufa, 
the stone found at Rome itself. But in the latter wall 
work one finds " sperone " — which can only have come 
from Gabii — and intermediate between these comes 
the case of "peperino" which Parker declares to come 
" from the quarries of the Alban hills." Now assum- 
ing P.'s facts to be true (and about the peperino I 
doubt — for peperino exists in Rome, as e.g. on the 
" Tarpeian " side of the Capitol, though it may be a 
different sort of peperino and so P. may be quite 
right), but assuming the truth of P.'s facts, one does 
get a sort of date for the reduction or annexation or 
cession of Gabii and Alba. And when this (and a 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 375 

good deal more no doubt than this) has been made 
out of the stones themselves, then I think we may get 
a sort of test for dealing with the later historic traditions 
of Varro and this Augustan folk. 

The book is such a chaos that I don't think anybody 
who hasn't a pretty good knowledge both of the ground 
and the questions at issue will make much out of it — 
and I suppose on some of the points, such as the 
Palatine and the Mamertine Prison we are to hear 
more in Vol. II., as we are to hear about the Forum. 
But the Capitoline is admirably done, especially the 
photographs and sections. If the ^Erarium and Tabu- 
larium as they stand there are of the date P. gives, it 
tells* a great tale about Regal Rome. And certainly to 
my unlearned eyes his pictures seem to make out his 
case. However I shall be glad to see your article, and 
how far you go with the C. B. As to the value of his 
book and his diggings I quite go with you. But some 
of his points I can't follow — such as the agger he 
attributes to Tarquinius outside the Servian wall — did 
he show you any remains of this ? As to the blunders, 
they are wonderful even for the C. B. Did you 
recognise the dear old Jesuit Papebroch in " Pape- 
brochio " ? 

I wish he had gone more fully and minutely into 
the subject of " Old Streets," which as it stands is a 
mere sketch, but an eminently suggestive one. If what 
he says is true, the " fosses " and so the old village- 
fortifications of the isolated hill forts left their mark 
on Rome to the last. 

Saturday, January 24. — This letter has tarried long 
— and this morning brings me a fresh note from you. 
Thanks for your corrections on the revise — the 
" Austria " was a silly slip evidently from copying 
Guizot. Thanks especially for recalling Edward's 
Parliament and its Scotch members, but the Pro- 
tector's is the first Parliament like that which now 
sits at S. Stephen's with Scotch and Irish members as 



376 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

well. Of course in calling Cromwell a " tyrant " I 
used the word in its strict sense ; and in that sense I 
don't think he is fairly a " tyrant " till he dissolves 
the 1654 Parliament. My notion of his character is, 
I am afraid, a new one — I say " afraid " because I hear 
Stubbs votes the book too "fanciful" already, but I 
took great pains to avoid being fanciful here, and 
amongst other things read all his letters and speeches 
twice through to make sure of things. Cromwell seems 
to me neither the ambitious hypocrite nor the " govern- 
ing genius " which people on one side or the other try 
to make him out, but a very right-meaning and able 
man who got with quite honest intentions into a false 
position and had not political genius enough to clear 
out of it. Of administrative genius he had plenty of 
course. All his later story seems to me very pathetic 
and mournful in the revolt he shows at his position of 
tyrant, and yet his inability to free himself from it. 
I felt bound to speak clearly about " tyranny " because 
I thought there was a great chance of folk misunder- 
standing my previous view of the Army and the Rump. 
The " expulsion " was no doubt an act of rebellion, and 
it is justifiable simply on the grounds which justify 
any other act of rebellion. The Bill which the Long 
Parliament was preparing to pass — reseating all present 
members without fresh election — seems to me such 
an act of outrageous misgovernment, depriving half 
England as it did of the right to elect its governors, 
as to justify a rebellion. And so far as I can make out 
from a number of small facts the country at large 
went with the army in what it did so far^ but on the 
distinct understanding that it was a rebelHon, and that 
things were at once to fall back into legal shape as 
soon as a new Parliament could be called. The " Bare- 
bones " Convention and the intermediate provisional 
Government is strictly in parallel with the provisional 
Government of (i) the Lords of the Council, and (2) 
the Prince of Orange with (3) the Convention he called 
together in 1688. That is to say, none of these could 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 377 

be justified save on the understanding that they were 
merely provisional till a legal Parliament should be 
called to do or undo their work and approve or con- 
demn those who did it. And this Parliament, I hold, 
did come together in 1654, and did distinctly confirm 
and sanction what had been done. 

So that till January 1655 I go with the Army, and 
believe all done if not legally and in order yet justifi- 
ably as against misrule, — in spite of John Bradshaw. 
But from the moment when C. dissolved that Parliament, 
before it had passed the measures giving him authority 
to govern, and with the Council levied taxes and what 
not, the " tyranny " begins, and goes on to the Parlia- 
ment of 1656 ; then after that break it begins again and 
goes on to C.'s death. 

The point on which, as I gather from your Amen, 
Bradshaw's words, you and I should differ is this. In 
1688 it was settled that there was a certain amount of 
misgovernment and oppression which justifies a country 
in rising in arms and deposing its King if it can't do so 
otherwise. I hold that when Parliament has become (as 
then) the actual Government, there is a certain amount of 
misgovernment and oppression which justifies a country 
in deposing it by force if it can do so none otherwise. 
There was no other way in 1653 of preventing the 
abominable wrong it was going to do in the Bill for the 
New Representative but turning it out, and there was 
nobody to turn it out but the army, as representative of 
the general rebellion of the country. It was a bad 
and unhappy business, but the fault really lay with the 
House, and above all (I quite agree with C.) with Sir 
Harry Vane. He was a good man, but it seems to me 
that it is good men who mostly bring about the evil 
of the world. 

So we are to have a dissolution ! I think it would 
be a good thing for Liberalism if we got a good beat- 
ing this time and had time to form a policy in opposi- 
tion.. The next question which the party must stand 



378 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

upon must be the Dis-establishment of the Church. 
The Ritualists have convinced me of its necessity. I 
can't abide paying money to make England Papist. 
But don't think me a Bismarck-man, as I am sorry 
to find Bryce is. I am still an " old Radical," and a 
worshipper of "Joe Hume." Good-bye. J. R. G. 



To E. A. Freeman 

{June 1874.] 

[Prof. Reinhold Pauli (i 823-1 882), the historian, 
received an honorary D.C.L. at Oxford in 1874.] 

. . . The whole world is hooting at me for not 
writing to you, dear E. A. F., and my conscience hoots 
with the world. The fact is, as you know, I have good 
long "flashes of silence " in the matter of correspond- 
ence to make up for the incessant nature of my oral 
gabble, and this flash has lasted over some quiet months. 
The saving in postage stamps has enabled me to pay 
my tailor's bill and look the world again in the face in the 
matter of "running accounts." But then unhappily 
it seems to have troubled you much. Pauli pictured 
you as sitting in the midst of your Peacocks and rest- 
ing your feet on a Dog with a Black Tongue, and swear- 
ing now by the Peacocks and now by the Dog with the 
Black Tongue to have no more to do with me. The 
picture was charming, but Pauli is losing his his- 
torical accuracy, and blooming into romance and new 
hats, so that I can't trust it. There was something 
absolutely rakish in his air after his Doctorate at Oxford, 
his new cut-a-way coat, his dangling little cane, his well- 
cut hair, — the whole stamp of Gottingen and Science 
had disappeared. Besides, if one accepts the statement 
that you can no longer write without Four Peacocks 
round your chair, can it be true that precisely at mid- 
day the Dog with the Black Tongue rushes from the 
circle, kills a sheep, and returns with the Farmer ? If 
this is not all Pauli-Legend I see in it the beginning of 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 379 

Legend. The Dog with the Black Tongue, — and the 
mid-day slaughter, — and the coming of the dark- 
browed Farmer, — all these strike one as Solar and 
Coxey features. I see you in the very process of 
becoming an Aryan Myth ! 

How I wish I could have run down to meet you at 
Oxford and made the historical quatuor into a quin- 
tette. The walk of the Four up Headington together 
was killing, as Bryce told it. Pauli must have rejoiced 
in seeing Stubbs, of whom he spake reverently and 
sweetly. Did he tell you the curious story of a lot of 
letters anent Dunstan turning up in Jaffe's papers, — 
which came into the Pauline hands, — just in time for 
him- to hand them over to William the Great ? The 
said Great one writes to me that he is awfully happy 
with his Dunstan Lives. I want him to publish the 
Lectures on the Angevin Kings he is going to give unto 
the Oxford maidens. Thus may he be subtly lured on 
to a History of the said A. K.'s, and diverted from the 
Dictionary making whereunto Bat Price calleth him. 

T'other day I met a Mage, — a real Black Artist, — 
a certain Baron Dupaty of Paris who spends his time 
in luring folk by Animal Magnetism and his leisure on 
spells. Evidently a good and venerable person, con- 
vinced he should get the D Is well in hand some 

day, though at present they are a little obstrepalous. 
For the past year he has let the Black Art alone in 
consequence of " a leetle accident " as he gently put it. 
On muttering a new spell which he had found in some 
" Arabian book," four " blue shapes " came out of a 
brick wall, the fourth whereof hit the Baron hard on 
the head and left him senseless on the garden walk, — 
before returning to his bricky home. He is a little 
discouraged, but does not despair of finding a spell 
which will prevent " blue shapes " from indulging in 
such pugnacious propensities. Anyhow, it is quite 
clear that we shall have to admit a new branch of 
study into the Arts-School of Alma Mater. 



38o LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

/ have done with Little Book ; but the printers 
print not, neither do the Map-makers mapmake, nor 
the Indexers indicate ! Eheu ! fugaces. — Ever yours, 
dear Freeman, J. R. G. 

To Miss von Glehn 



Dearest Olga 



4 Beaumont Street, W., 
September 4, 1874. 




J.Kfi. 

(mathematical diagkam or j. r. g. prostrate at o. v. g.'s feet.) 

Penitence, Contrition, and generally Dust and Ashes 
is my present State of Mind ! Pilgrimages are recom- 
mended just now for sinners of this sort {vide Arch- 
bishop Manning passim). May I make a Pilgrimage 
to the Hill of Peak ? 

I have already sent out for the hardest Peas that 
can be got in the neighbourhood. 

Have you a coal-hole (nay, even a coal-scuttle) into 
which I might creep on Saturday even and find a 
Sabbath's repose ? 

And do you^ in such a case, mean to go to Church 
twice? I put it to you, dear Olga, on Christian 
grounds. How can Penitence, Contrition, and Dust 
and Ashes go if the good people trample, yes, trample 
on the fallen .'' 

But in any case may I come ( -I- the hard peas) on 
Saturday ? — Yours ever, J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

4 Beaumont Street, W., 
September 5, 1874. 

[Professor Earle's Gloucester Fragments (1861) con- 
tains Anglo-Saxon documents relating to St. Swithun. 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 381 

William Topley (i 841-1894) published a work upon 
the geology of the world in 1875, and was author of 
previous papers on geology.] 

My dear Freeman — Would it bother you to find 
out from Earle for me in what language he believes 
the Annals of Swithun, as well as the earlier Bishops' 
Roll of Winchester on which Swithun based them, to 
have been written ? 

This is to me the one great difficulty of his 
invaluable Introduction, which I have read over 
I fear to say how many times in the vain hope 
of solving it. So far as I understand it Mr. 
EaHe's general drift is that Mlfred's Chronicle or 
edition of the Chronicle was the first English work 
of the sort, and this is clearly Pauli's view, and so 
far as I could gather in conversation it is Stubbs' 
view too. 

On the other hand Earle traces the work of the 
Swithun-Editor on the earlier Bishop- Roll by linguistic 
traces (see p. xiv of Introduct.), which would surely 
derive their force from the said Swithun-Editor writing 
in English. 

Is it possible that he means this — the Swithun- 
Editor — to be the first English work? Or again is 
there a chance that the earlier Bishops' Roll of Winton 
was in English ? Of course one would bow to Earle's 
decision on such a subject, but it would cost me a little 
struggle to accept the last theory, and to make 
Winchester an exception among the multitude of 
similar houses where like Rolls were being kept in 
Latin. 

I own too that to me the " Enghsh-prose writing" 
of i^lfred's time looks like a sudden outburst, which 
by dint of its suddenness and popularity conquered for 
a while the tendency of prose literature to take a Latin 
form. But of course the Swithun-Editor might have 
been a precursor of this movement. 

So. again as to the Traditional entries of the English 



382 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Conquest which Mr. Earle looks on as having been 
picked up by the Swithun- Editor (gifted I suppose 
with an antiquarian turn for such things like the 
author of the Book of Chronicles), and stuck on to 
the head of the Bishops' Roll which he was editing 
with his own tail to it. Were they in Enghsh, and if 
so does any trace of what must be their very archaic 
EngHsh remain, or were they translated by Swithun, 
or has their archaic character disappeared under the 
revision of those later editors whom I meet with in 
the close of the earlier introduction, and who give one 
the same sort of headaches as the Four Jehovists and 
Five Elohists of the Pentateuch — according-to-the- 
Germans .? 

Earle would really help me by a reply to these un- 
conscionable questions, as I am at work on the early 
time and want to get my brain clear about authorities. 
You know I have always "poked" at you for not 
going into this subject yourself Do you keep it for 
Appendix ZZZ in vol. v ? 

It is very pleasant to have given over mere com- 
piling, and to be able to dip again into the old days 
for my first vols, which [pace vestra) I mean to make 
something more than a " compilation," and in which I 
daresay you will give me credit for a little acquaint- 
ance with " authorities." The worst of it is that as one 
goes along there are a thousand by-roads which tempt 
one and which one has to pass by with shut eyes. 
However if one lives one may return and explore them 
some day. Then I have a sort of notion that geology, 
and such considerations of the early physical state of 
Britain as geology brings, might do more for our 
knowledge of pre-Roman Britain and the boundaries 
of its tribes, than can the wretched warming up of 
Camden and his followers. Did you ever see a paper 
of one Topley on " The Relation of the Parish 
boundaries in the S.E. of England to Great Physical 
features " ? It is very curious in pointing out a line 
of inquiry which the author evidently has no notion 



Ill THE "SHORT HISTORY" 383 

of. I wish the dear Dax would " come over and 
help us." 

Good-bye, dear F., I am very busy and fairly well. 
Do you pass through London on your way to the Two 
Romes ? — Ever yours affectionately, J. R. Green. 



PART IV 

LAST YEARS 

The Short History of the English People was published 
at the end of 1874, and immediately made a success to 
which few parallels can be found. It recalled that of 
Macaulay's History which some twenty-five years before 
had taken the world by storm. Macaulay had the 
advantage of being already famous ; and moreover, 
as Mr. Bryce remarks, of writing upon a scale which 
admitted of abundant anecdote and illustration ; whereas 
Green had the difficult problem of combining the 
greatest possible condensation with undiminished anima- 
tion of narrative. The success was clearly due, in the 
first instance, to the literary instinct which enabled him 
to satisfy the conditions thus imposed. " I am going," 
he writes in a letter from St. Philip's " to send Alford 
the opening of my Angevin chapter dished up on a 
paper, but substantially the same as I want it in my 
book. I hope he will take it, as I shall never be able 
to judge its readability {the thing I care about) till I 
see it in type. Cook thinks that sort of anticipation of 
oneself bad — but I am wholly French on the question, 
as I am on most literary questions. It seems to me 
that on all points of literary art we have to sit at the 
feet of French Gamaliels." The opinion is, I think, 
characteristic. /Anyhow the clear and graceful style, 
the skill with which the materials are grouped, and 

384 



PART IV LAST YEARS 385 

the singular vivacity which shows the sustained 
interest of the writer, enabled him to strike out 
the most effective method of presentation. " The 
book," says Mr. Bryce, " was philosophical enough for 
scholars, and popular enough for schoolboys," I shall 
not intrude any criticism of my own, but it may be 
well to give a judgment pronounced by the highest 
authority. " Green," wrote the late Bishop Stubbs, 
" possessed in no scanty measure all the gifts that 
contribute to the making of a great historian. He 
combined, so far as the history of England is concerned, 
U complete and firm grasp of the subject in its unity and 
integrity, with a wonderful command of details and a 
thorough sense of perspective and proportion. All his 
work was real and original work ; few people besides 
those who knew him well would see, under the charm- 
ing ease and vivacity of his style, the deep research and 
sustained industry of the laborious student. But it was 
so ; there was no department of our national records 
that he had not studied, and I think I may say 
mastered. Hence, I think, the unity of his dramatic 
scenes and the cogency of his historical arguments. 
Like other people, he made mistakes sometimes ; but 
scarcely ever does the correction of his mistakes affect 
either the essence of the picture or the force of the 
argument. And in him the desire of stating and point- 
ing the truth of history was as strong as the wish to 
make both his pictures and his arguments strong and 
forcible. He never treated an opposing view with in- 
tolerance and contumely ; his handling of controversial 
matter was exemplary. And then, to add still more to 
the debt we owe him, there is the wonderful simplicity 
and beauty of the way he tells his tale, which more than 
anything else has served to make English history a 
popular and, as it ought to be, if not the first at least the 



386 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

second study of all Englishmen." Critics at the time 
gave a very cordial welcome to the history, and more or 
less anticipated this estimate. There was, however, one 
exception to which some reference will be found in the 
following letters. Two Articles in Frasers Magazine 
(September and December 1875) contained a long list 
of errors. The author inferred that Green was both 
careless and superficial, and that the chorus of praise 
came from shallow admirers, or from the " mutual 
admiration society " constituted, as it was supposed, by 
Green, Freeman, Stubbs, and their allies. The critic 
hit real blots, though, as Stubbs says in the above pas- 
sage, the errors affected the surface and not the structure 
of the book. Many of them were such as could be 
remedied in a list of errata saying, " read John for Will- 
iam," or " January for December," and Mr. Morley, 
to whom the article had been offered for the Fortnightly 
Review, told the author that instead of publishing it as 
a criticism he ought to send it to Green as a useful list 
of corrections for the next edition. I need only remark 
that the circumstances under which the book was 
written made many slips almost inevitable. Green's 
want of verbal memory and his absence from English 
libraries made complete accuracy impossible. He took 
the proper course; corrected the mistakes which had 
been pointed out, and was more careful in his later 
work. Mr. Bryce gives a scale in which Green is placed 
above Milman for accuracy, bracketed as equal with 
Macaulay, and put a little below Grote. Ranke and 
Thirlwall, followed by Gibbon and Carlyle, form a first 
class. 

Soon after the publication of the Short History Green 
undertook a corrected and much enlarged edition. This 
became the History of the English People, which appeared 
in four volumes in 1877,1878, 1879, and i^^o. Itgained 



IV LAST YEARS 387 

in accuracy and solidity, and gives his latest views upon 
interesting questions. Ifit loses something in freshness 
a sufficient explanation is suggested by the labour in- 
volved in a thorough rewriting under circumstances 
which will presently appear. One motive for carrying 
out this task must be explained. The success of the 
Short History had for the time raised Green above all 
pecuniary difficulty ; but the income derivable from 
such a source was precarious ; he had no other resources, 
and the state of his health made it important that he 
should not be dependent upon immediately profitable 
work. His marriage in 1877 increased the importance 
of making provision for the future. Now, the Short 
History had made as marked a success in America as in 
England. It was in the portmanteau of every traveller 
who came to us across the Atlantic. At this time, 
however, an Enghsh author had no legal copyright in 
the United States. Messrs. Harper, who had there 
reprinted the book and had become the sole publishers, 
did not consider themselves bound to pay any royalty 
to the author. They promised, however, to pay 
a royalty if Green would undertake to bring out 
a revised edition. Green, therefore, accepted the 
laborious task of going over the whole ground again, 
a duty which was made imperative by his fastidious 
desire for thoroughness ; and was thus prevented from 
turning to account the mass of materials already collected 
for his proposed history of the Angevin Kings. The 
amount of reading and thought given to this collection 
surprises even those who know his work well. His 
notes cover the religious revival, the literature, and a 
large part of the political history of the time of Henry I. 
and Stephen, and the lives of the early Counts of Anjou. 
A number of carefully finished passages, some of the 
more -important written many times over, show the 



388 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

grandeur of his scheme. One very interesting point 
is the criticism of early sources which, written with- 
out the light of modern French research, anticipates 
in great measure the conclusions of later editors of 
the Angevin Chronicles. Unfortunately the state of 
Green's health forced him to abandon the plan for a re- 
vised version of the Short History ^ and no such edition 
was brought out during his life. 

Meanwhile Green had become famous, and during 
the following years had such satisfaction as could be 
derived from a general recognition of his services to 
history.^ " It was delightful to see," writes Mr. 
Humphry Ward, " how he took the startling success of 
the Short History. Those who had read the proof-sheets 
had to some extent prepared him to expect a success, 
but they were not unanimous, and the actual facts were 
beyond all that any of us had hoped for. Ill as he was, 
it was an immense comfort to him to be relieved from 
anxiety as to ways and means ; and he was naturally not 
insensible to such public recognition as he thus received 
after fifteen years of obscure work. He was pleased 
when the committee of the Athenaum elected him 
'under Rule II.,' and when his own college (where he 
had been so unhappy) elected him an honorary fellow. 
But it is certain that his chief pleasure came from the 
new opportunities for work, and for starting other people 
in schemes which this first great success had given him. 
Now the world is a little overdone with historical and 
literary ' series,' ' epochs,' ' primers,' and what not ; but 
in the early seventies it was a new thing, and Green 
may almost be called the inventor of it. Nay, it was 
when I was an undergraduate (perhaps in 1868) that 

1 He had been examiner in the History School at Oxford in 1874, and was 
elected honorary fellow of Jesus in 1877. In 1876 he was made a member of the 
Athenaeum, and a corresponding member of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 
In 1878 he received the honorary degree of LL.D. at Edinburgh. 



IV LAST YEARS 389 

he drew up an elaborate scheme for a sort of * Heroes 
of the Nations ' series, of which I was to write one. 
Nothing came of it, but it exists now, done by other 
hands." 

His influence upon younger students is described 
by Mrs. Humphry Ward. " There was in him a per- 
petual eagerness, an inexhaustible power of knowledge, 
that were ever putting idler or emptier minds to shame. 
You brought him the subject of an article, the sketch 
of a literary paper. He would begin to turn it over, 
to run through the reading it involved. And as he 
grew keener and talked faster, as the flow of memory 
broadened, and the names of books came rattling out 
as the mere first preliminaries of the subject, one must 
either fly him at once so as to get the article written at 
all, or one must yield to the fascination and the stimulus, 
and go away abashed to begin one's work over again. 
Well do I remember bringing him the sketch of a 
literature primer for his criticism, some time, I imagine, 
in the winter of 1873-74, just before the coming out of 
the Short History. We found him in his bachelor rooms 
in Beaumont Street ; for his most helpful, most happy 
marriage did not take place till 1877. I can see now 
the dingy rooms lined with books, and Mr. Green 
pacing up and down, the great brow dwarfing the small 
face. He looked at my sketch ; he grew indignant 
with it, he threw it aside. He proceeded to write the 
book himself, as he walked and talked. As far as I 
can remember, no more masterly outline of a great 
subject was ever drawn. Meanwhile the tyro who had 
brought the sketch sat dumb, with her *eye on the 
object ' at last. The result for a moment was a deep 
and wholesome melancholy ; but it was one of those 
discouragements that react, that spur and stimulate. 

" But I have many other recollections of Mr. Green's 



390 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

talk to put beside this somewhat scathing experience, — 
recollections of pure joy. Once, in Notre Dame, — the 
dim rose-pierced gloom of Notre Dame, — we stood 
beside him, while there came from him a history of what 
the church had seen. He poured it out quite simply, 
— scenes from the Middle Age, from Louis XIV., from 
the Revolution, — repeopling the dark space before us 
by that mingled magic of memory and imagination in 
which he was unrivalled. And for those who heard him 
there, his own dear ghost lives henceforward among the 
older phantoms of the church." 

Mrs. Ward, I am sure, will accept a remark suggested 
by her " scathing experience." Green was always eager 
to encourage as well as to " spur." So early as 1859 
he says in a diary that he has found some unexpected 
merits in a work which he had been asked to criticise^ 
" I fear," he adds, " I should be too kindly for a critic. 
As I work out my criticisms, I discover beauties and 
forget the faults. In fact, the dullest men improve 
under the culture of the pen. The effort of composi- 
tion is a net that drags up much mud, but a grain or 
two of fine gold with it. There is not a mind in the 
world that has not something worth extraction in it." 
This eager sympathy with the aspirations of beginners 
mixed with the bracing criticism which it might occa- 
sionally be well to administer. 

In 1876 Green took part in the political agitation of 
the day. He had been keenly interested, as has been 
seen, in the elections of 1868, and never ceased to 
watch the course of events. The " Eastern Question 
Association " was now formed in order to oppose the 
warlike tendencies of the Conservative ministry. Green 
was chosen a member of the Executive Committee of 
the Association, and served also on a literary sub- 
committee of five, which included WiUiam Morris and 



IV LAST YEARS 391 

Mr. Stopford Brooke. Its function was to draw up 
a manifesto convoking the conference which met in 
December 1876. The General Committee continued 
to meet until the Treaty of BerHn (June 1878), and 
Green took such part in its proceedings as was con- 
sistent with his weak health and frequent absence from 
England. The intensely patriotic feeling which mani- 
fests itself in his history of older England was shown 
also throughout his life by the closeness with which he 
followed the evolution of the contemporary history. 
It was a delight to him to touch English soil after 
his winters abroad. " We English people," he would 
say,*" live in free human air." During his times of 
exile he kept up his knowledge of current affairs, and 
would never open his letters until he had gone through 
the newspapers. His patriotism, indeed, strengthened 
instead of weakening opinions repudiated by the party 
which would arrogate to itself the sole possession of 
patriotic feeling. He had an especially strong feeling 
upon the Irish question. " He was the first Home 
Ruler I ever saw," says Mr. Bryce ; " he was a Home 
Ruler when no one else thought at all about it." He 
sympathised with the spirit of Irish nationality. "A 
State," he would say, " is accidental ; it can be made or 
unmade ; but a nation is something real which can be 
neither made nor destroyed." He had once planned a 
history of Ireland, but abandoned the idea because the 
continuous record of misery and misgovernment was 
too painful to contemplate. He held that it would be 
possible to devise a system which would make the union 
of the countries compatible with the welfare, and in 
harmony with the aspirations of the weaker ; but he 
was not satisfied with the policy of the English Liberals 
of his time. Though in England he was in favour of 
a secular system of education, he thought that the Irish 



392 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Catholics had a right to the religious system which they 
preferred. He was profoundly affected by the murder 
of Lord Frederick Cavendish (June 1882), thinking that 
the English might be moved to blind resentment by an 
act for which the Irish people were not really respon- 
sible ; and during his last illness he denounced with his 
old ardour the speech in which W. E. Forster (at the 
opening of the session of 1883) defended coercion. It 
would even be better, he held, for both countries that 
England should grant complete independence to Ireland 
than hold it by mihtary force. To Green, in short, 
patriotism seemed to imply the most lively sensibility 
to the morality of the policy dictated, and he was pro- 
portionally indignant at attempts to enlist patriotic 
sentiment in the cause of what he regarded as oppres- 
sion of other nations. 

I have now to speak briefly of the last period of 
Green's life. The correspondence becomes scanty ; 
partly because he was unequal to the labour, and 
partly because he could devolve it upon another. In 
January 1877 he became engaged to Alice, daughter 
of E. A. Stopford, Archdeacon of Meath, and their 
marriage took place in the following June. A biog- 
rapher who has to record a happy marriage must 
always, I fancy, be painfully conscious of the utter 
inadequacy of his language in speaking of its results, 
even should he possess a far more intimate knowledge 
of the facts than can often be accessible, and be freed 
by time and circumstance from obligations to reticence. 
In the present case my duty is clear. I am bound to 
give certain facts, knowledge of which is essential to 
a fair appreciation of Green's life and character. To 
make any comment upon them would be to insult the 
intelligence of my readers. I may be permitted, how- 
ever, to say this much ; the story which I have to tell 



IV LAST YEARS 3^3 

is that of a brave man's struggle to do his work to the 
last, carried on with unsurpassable gallantry against the 
most depressing difficulties, and no one can fail to draw 
the inevitable inference that he was cheered and sup- 
ported throughout by a devotion worthy of its object. 
At the time of Green's marriage he thought himself 
rather better, but was aware of the precarious tenure 
upon which his life must be henceforth held. An 
attack of haemorrhage occurred in July ; and he and 
his wife returned to 25 Connaught Street, to which 
he had moved from Beaumont Street. There they 
settled for the rest of the year in " four little rooms 
over a decorator's shop." The first volume of the 
longer history had been published in January ; and he 
now set to work upon the second. He took constant 
pleasure in strolls with his wife in Hyde Park, and 
they occasionally paid visits to Macmillan's house in 
Streatham, and made more distant flights to friends in 
the country. They went to the Humphry Wards at 
Oxford ; where Green took his wife round and showed 
her " all English history from Offa to Newman." He 
would not take her to his old college, because its 
associations with the undergraduate days were too 
painful ; but he displayed the beauties of Magdalen, 
and pointed out the place where as a schoolboy he had 
dared to interrupt Dr. Mozley's walk by inquiring 
how it could be lawful for Christians to eat black pud- 
dings, a practice apparently forbidden by Apostolic 
authority. In October they visited Tennyson at Aid- 
worth ; and the poet received them with abundant 
kindliness and sympathy. " You're a jolly, vivid 
man," he said to Green ; " and I'm glad to have 
known you ; you're as vivid as lightning." Green 
gave some advice as to authorities for " Becket," then 
in process of composition. 



394 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Green finally accomplished the second volume of 
the history at the end of the year ; and then escaped 
to Capri, which was supposed to have a more favour- 
able climate than the Riviera. The place was cheap 
and simple. There was only one road and one 
carriage, and there were four cows kept in Roman 
cellars. In stormy weather, a pig hanging in a 
butcher's shop represented the whole stock of pro- 
visions for a week, and was converted into "veal 
cutlets " and " stewed lamb " by the skill of the cook. 
Green had to live mainly upon biscuits and puddings 
prepared by Mrs. Green ; and the room was bare and 
without even an easy-chair. The journey had been 
bitterly cold ; he was exhausted by the effort of finish- 
ing his volume, and he was ill throughout the spring. 
There were no other visitors, except one or two invalids, 
and no doctor available. Green worked steadily at 
his history, and had brought out a large case of books. 
He was invariably patient and gentle, and never cooled 
in his political and historical enthusiasms. When he 
felt a tendency to depression, he would ask for " a stiff 
book " ; he wanted " something to set his teeth into." 
Having struggled through the winter, the Greens 
returned through Rome. There in March he was 
taken ill and was moved to Florence, where he fortu- 
nately met the Macmillans, who nursed him with their 
usual kindness. For some time he was not expected 
to live, but by the end of April he was well enough 
to return to London. In the autumn the Greens 
moved to 50 Welbeck Street, where they occupied 
part of the house of Dr. Lauder Brunton, Mrs. Green's 
brother-in-law. His health so far improved that in 
this and the following summer he was able to pay a 
few visits. He went to Edinburgh in 1878 to receive 
the LL.D. degree, and on the way saw his old friend, 



IV LAST YEARS 395 

Canon Taylor, at Settrington. Among other friends 
of those years were Lord Portsmouth, Lord Carnarvon, 
Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, Lord Selborne, Mr. 
Goshen, Sir Louis Mallet, Laurence OHphant, and 
Matthew Arnold. He enjoyed the company of such 
friends, and the charm of his conversation secured a 
warm welcome from every one ; but he found the 
strain upon his strength to be dangerous. He returned 
therefore to London, where he worked steadily at his 
book. The Hfe was almost as solitary as at Capri, 
except an occasional afternoon at the Athenaeum. At 
last the third volume was finished, and in January 
1879 the Greens went abroad again and spent the rest 
of the winter at Mentone, Rapallo, and Florence. At 
Florence they met and made friends of Mr. and Mrs. 
John Addington Symonds ; and Green was cheered by 
the news that 5000 copies of the two first volumes had 
been sold in America, and produced a cheque for £,110. 
They returned to London in the spring, and Green 
drew up a scheme for the Geography of the British Isles 
to provide occupation for his wife. The book appeared 
under their joint names at the end of the year. He 
was now struggling with the fourth, and happily last, 
volume of the history. He was afraid to stay in 
London as long as he had done in previous years, and 
by a great effort, and in spite of increasing weakness, 
he managed to finish his task in the autumn. He 
was able to reach Capri at the beginning of November, 
having travelled by the Rhine to Verona and Venice, 
and stayed there till May. The room had been 
improved by a friend's gift of a plain sofa ; but the 
life was hard. The winter was bitter beyond prece- 
dent ; snow fell in Capri, the first time for a century ; 
there were violent storms, and the water-supply had 
given out. The image of the patron saint was put up 



396 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

in the church, and saluted with crackers. When he 
had brought rain he was put back in the sacristy. He 
then stopped the rain, but left a bitter north wind. 
Green suffered, in spite of all attempts to keep out the 
draughts. The companionship of Mr. and Mrs. Isaac 
Taylor was a pleasant relief to the solitude, though 
an attack of scarlet fever, from which their daughter 
suffered, caused some anxiety and trouble. 

The labours of the last few years had at last, in 
spite of all difficulties, set Green at liberty. The 
fourth volume of the history appeared in January 
1880. He might now take up the schemes for which 
he had prepared himself by collecting the materials to 
which his imaginative sympathy would give form and 
colour. Unhappily, the labours had left their mark ; 
his strength had seriously decreased ; and any plan 
which he adopted must be framed with the knowledge 
that his time for work was narrowly limited. Never- 
theless, he set to work with all his remaining energy. 
The spring was again one of the worst on record ; but 
Green revived a little, and began his labours upon the 
earliest period of English history. He had set his wife 
to work upon a scheme which he had devised for a 
history of Greece. He was so much pleased with her 
notes that he promoted her to co-operate in his own 
task. She read and noted for the histories, and dis- 
cussed results with him ; varying their occupation by 
strolls in the vineyards in search of Roman antiquities. 
Towards May they returned to England and settled to 
work through the summer. He now occupied a house 
which had been previously taken at 14 Kensington 
Square. Green was overjoyed to escape at last from 
the constant discomforts of a life in lodgings or apart- 
ments, amidst which his work had hitherto been done. 
His delight in having at last a house of his own, won 



IV LAST YEARS 397 

by the strenuous labour of the last years, was pathetic. 
This house was especially associated with his memory 
in the minds of many friends. Mrs. Humphry Ward 
recalls " the afternoons in his later years, when the 
pretty house in Kensington Square was the centre of a 
small society such as England produces much more 
rarely than France. Mr. Lecky came — Sir Henry 
Maine, Mr. Freeman, Mr. Bryce, Bishop Stubbs some- 
times, Mr. Stopford Brooke, and many more. It was 
the talk of equals, ranging the widest horizons, started 
and sustained by the energy, the undauntedness of a 
dyi-ng man. There in the corner of the sofa sat the 
thin wasted form, life flashing from the eyes, breathing 
from the merry or eloquent lips, beneath the very 
shadow and seal of death — the eternal protesting life 
of the intelligence. His talk gave perpetually. Much 
of the previous talk of the world has not been a giving 
but a gathering and plundering talk. . . . But Mr. 
Green's was talk of the best kind, abundant, witty, 
disinterested ; and his poet's instinct for the lives 
and thoughts of others, his quick imagination, his 
humorous and human curiosity about all sorts and 
sides of things, made pose and pedantry impossible to 
him. He could be extravagant and provoking; it was 
always easy to set him on edge, and call up a mood 
of irritation and paradox. But as he grew happier, as 
success and fame came to him, he grew gentler and 
more pliable. . . . Among all that was lost by his 
early death ... let us put it on record that we in 
London, where conversation flourishes so little and so 
hardly — lost also a great talker, one capable of stirring 
in his fellows all human and delightful energies, not 
only by his pen but by his word and smile and bodily 
self" 

It had been suggested that a winter in Egypt might 



398 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

still raise Green to a better state of health. It was 
thought best to save fatigue by making the sea voyage. 
Misfortunes followed. A gale took the ship unpre- 
pared in the Bay of Biscay. She was apparently, 
though not really, in danger for some time ; cabins 
and state-rooms were flooded ; luggage swamped ; and 
the passengers exposed to the utmost discomfort. 
Green was not in a state to bear hardships. When 
Egypt was reached, Cairo proved to be unhealthy, and 
the Greens proceeded to Luxor. A guide was trying 
to exhibit a tomb by help of a Roman candle. It did 
not go off, and Green took it from his hand. The 
thing then proved to be a rocket. It exploded, and 
burnt Green's arm from the elbow to the fingers. He 
had to ride back three hours in burning heat, and was 
for long laid up by the shock. He still went on 
working, though Mrs. Green had to do all the writing. 
In January 1881 heat became excessive, and the ther- 
mometer rose to 115°. The days were cloudless and 
endless, and the nights were never cool. Green con- 
tinued to work in the mornings ; but any attempt to 
see sights prostrated him. No escape was possible, till 
in February some friends returning to Cairo offered a 
place in their dharbeeyah. The voyage from Luxor 
lasted five weeks, and was a reUef after the dust of 
Luxor. The Italian ports were reported to be in 
quarantine, owing to a fear of cholera ; and the Greens 
sailed for Marseilles at the end of March. It became 
cold, and at Avignon he became very ill. He was 
impatient to be at home, and reached London in April. 
His state was then so serious that Andrew Clark one 
evening told Mrs. Green that he could not live for 
six weeks. " I have so much work to do ! " Green 
happened to say that night, "if I could only finish 
my work ! " Mrs. Green spent the night in drawing 



IV LAST YEARS 399 

up a scheme which might relieve his anxiety. The 
work was to be so arranged that, if completed, it 
might be separately pubHshed ; and if broken off, 
might be incorporated in the previous work. Green, 
upon seeing this next morning, understood at once why 
the suggestion was made and began to carry out the 
plan the same day. For many weeks he could not 
sit up or take solid food. He was unable to hold a 
pen, or even to make pencil corrections on a proof. 
At intervals he could dictate for a short time, or go 
through references with his wife's help. He dictated 
as. he talked, very rapidly, and with perfect clearness 
and precision. He knew every book in his library 
intimately, and could at once tell where to look for the 
passages required. He would constantly throw aside 
a chapter, and dictate the substance over again without 
referring to the discarded matter. The motive for 
such changes was not the need of altering the wording, 
but of improving the general arrangement. There 
are as many as eight or ten different proofs of parts of 
the book. Much of it was wholly rewritten five times. 
He was unwearied in correcting, and never sent slips 
to press till he had seen them three times. By August 
500 pages were printed of the work done in Egypt 
and since his return. When the last proof had been 
corrected, a discovery was made about a certain iEthel- 
wald. Wearied as he was. Green spent two more 
days in work rather than leave the incorrect statement. 
The Making of England was finally prepared for 
publication before the winter. It appeared in January 
1882. This extraordinary achievement had tried his 
strength to the uttermost. For weeks he was unable 
to leave the house, though occasionally he could take 
a short drive in the Park. The visits of his friends 
were his great recreation, but he was only able to see 



400 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

one at a time. In the autumn he started for a winter 
at Mentone. His skilful doctor and devoted friend. 
Dr., now Sir Lauder, Brunton, travelled with him 
as far as Boulogne, where he rested for a time in 
order to gather strength for the further journey. 
He began already to work upon the Conquest of 
England^ but could rarely leave his room. Sir 
Lauder Brunton came back again in October to super- 
intend the journey to Mentone. There he settled 
the Greens in the Villa S. Nicolas. They returned 
again to a solitary life. Green read Shakespeare and 
Scott constantly in these years. In January 1882 he 
had the pleasure of visits from the Humphry Wards 
and the Macmillans. Mrs. Humphry Ward had 
spoken of a scheme for a Spanish history ; and Mrs. 
Green, by her husband's desire, visited every library 
on the coast as far as Nice to discover books upon the 
subject. He had devised a scheme for the book by 
the time of Mrs. Ward's arrival ; though, as it turned 
out, her change of intentions prevented it from being 
turned to account. Visits, however, exhausted him, 
and he had to return to solitude. In January 1882 
he received the Making of England} Some remarks 
upon it by a friend disheartened him so much that for 
six weeks he was unable to work. He started again 
in March ; when Mrs. Green was disabled as an 
amanuensis by an attack of " writer's cramp " in both 
hands. He could dictate to no one else, and she at 
last succeeded in doing a little with her left hand. 
He stopped her one day when she was throwing away 
a sheet upon which she had drawn up some notes for 

1 In 1882 it was proposed to give him an honorary degree at his own university. 
For some reason, although the proposal was supported by some of the most distin- 
guished members of the council, it was not carried. His friends understood that it was 
only postponed till the following year. It was then too late, and he had suffered the 
disappointment. 



IV 



LAST YEARS 401 



his use. " Whenever I think I can do no more," he 
said, " I look at that and go on." They were in 
Kensington Square again for a few months during 
the summer. 

The last winter (1882-83) was again spent at the 
Villa S. Nicolas. The rooms had been made more 
cheerful by a few little ornaments; and Green met 
depressing moods by a curiously characteristic device. 
He could amuse himself by a childlike " make-believe." 
In the evening, he would pretend solemnly to be 
" at home," draw up his chair gravely, and warm his 
toes at the unlighted hearth. He was carrying out 
an old theory. He records in his early diary how 
he said to a friend, depressed by painful reflections, 
" Drill your thoughts — shut out the gloomy, and call in 
the bright. There is more wisdom in * shutting one's 
eyes,' than your copy-book philosophers will allow." 
He acted upon the principle, and got an extraordinary 
amount of gaiety from playing at being gay. 

The Conquest of England still went on. In January 
1883, he decided to make a change, in spite of the 
cost of cancelling 4000 copies of matter already 
printed by the Macmillans. One morning in January, 
he had a sudden momentary access of strength. His 
eagerness to advance was impeded by the inevitable 
slowness of Mrs. Green's left-hand penmanship. He 
got a table placed across his sofa, and was able to 
write several sheets of the first chapter. That was 
his last piece of work. "Now I am weary," he 
said, "and can work no more." Enough of the 
book had been written to enable Mrs. Green to put 
together the fragments, and bring it out a few months 

later. 

A few friends came to see him, — his brother, Mr. 
Bryce, Mr. Brooke Lambert, and Mr. Humphry Ward. 



402 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

On the news of a serious change (February ist), the 
Macmillans at once left London, and came to Mentone 
and stayed till the end. His doctor said that he had 
never seen a case in which the mind was so clear and 
active, and the will so resolute under such weakness. 
He showed marvellous determination in refusing almost 
all drink for forty-eight hours, because it was supposed 
to be injurious. A month or two before he had told 
Mrs. Green that he should make no more inquiries 
about his condition, but trusted her to speak to him 
when it should be necessary. On February 25, she 
had to announce to him that rallying was impossible. 
Only his courage had enabled him to live so long. 
" It was good of you to tell me," he replied ; and after 
thinking, he added ; " I have something to say in my 
book still which 1 know is worth saying. I feel I 
could do good work. I will make a fight for it. I 
will do what I can, and I must have sleeping draughts 
for a week. After that it will not matter if they lose 
their effect." Then he asked her to go on reading the 
Life of Lord Lawrence to him. 

On March 3 he took leave of his friends, and 
afterwards saw no one except his wife. He died 
March 7, 1883. 

Sir Lauder Brunton said that his force of will and 
enthusiasm for his work had kept him alive for two 
years longer than any doctor would have thought 
possible. He told his wife that what had kept him 
alive was his dread of separation from her. Many 
years before he had said, " I know what men will say 
of me ; they will say, * he died learning.' " Mr. 
Humphry Ward adds that they will also say, " he 
died loving." 



IV LAST YEARS 403 

To E. A. Freeman 

4 Beaumont Street, W., 
January 7, 1875. 

[Refers to Mr. T. L. Kington Oliphant's Sources of 
Standard English, 1873. Mr. A.J. Ellis (18 14-1890) 
published some papers upon early English pronuncia- 
tion in the early English Text Society and the Chaucer 
Society. Freeman's Comparative Politics appeared in 

1 873-] 

Thanks, dear Freeman, for the proof, though it is 
too late for the present edition. I keep your sugges- 
tions that come behind time in the vain hope of some 
day correcting and enlarging the book. I can't quite 
go with all your suggestions about style, but they are 
always useful in recalling me to greater precision and 
clearness. Where we part most is in the question of 
" personifying," which makes a great figure in this 
proof. No doubt such expressions as " the terror of 
the Irish massacre hung round its leaders " belong to 
poetry rather than to prose, but if used in moderation 
the greater English prose-writers have always vindicated 
their right to employ them. It is quite possible, and 
I think true, that I don't use it in moderation, and 
so even if we differ your criticism is useful. By 
" Presbyterian Churchmen " I meant just what I said 
— the men of a church which was then by law Pres- 
byterian. Gauden was a Presbyterian and conformed 
in 1660, having immense trouble by-the-bye to wring 
his bishopric out of Clarendon. He seems to have 
done it by threatening to claim the Eikon as his own. 

I too have been reading and like Oliphant's book, 
but I wish he didn't overdo his case. In the three 
pieces of English he takes as typical, the last is a mere 
caricature. He does not do justice too to the value 
of Latin or other foreign words as alternative words, 
as in the old instance of " acknowledge and con- 
fess " ; I don't know whether you will care for this, 



404 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

as Bryce tells me you say, " we mustn't mind re- 
peating the same word," but I own my ear won't 
stand repetition. Then too in his very interesting 
account of the way in which the Friars brought in their 
outlandish terms, he doesn't tell how many of these 
actually supplemented living English words, and how 
many were simply introduced as names for ideas which 
had had no English names before. In the latter case 
one would like, too, to know whether the words could 
have been supplied by English, whether it retained its 
old combinative power, or whether "In-wit" and the 
like were mere Wardour Street archaeologisms. His 
praise of Morris's poetry as a specimen of good 
English is fair enough, but then it should be re- 
membered that Morris dealt wholly with outer scenes 
or definite actions which are easily expressed in common 
English words. It is when one comes to the finer and 
more abstract side of things that the pinch comes. 
But I own the real reason why I stand a little on my 
guard as to the " English " restoration which is going 
on is that I am afraid we may lose through it certain 
elements of beauty in style which the mixed texture of 
our present speech gives us. In Shakespeare's famous 
burst about " mercy " in the Merchant of Venice fine 
follows line in the simplest English, but when he 
wishes to heighten his tone at the close it is interesting 
to see how we get lines full of Latinisms : — 

The quality of mercy is not strain'd. 

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 

Upon the place beneath : it is twice blessed ; 

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes : 

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest : it becomes 

The throned monarch better than his crovs^n ; 

His sceptre show^s the force of temporal power. 

The attribute to awe and majesty. 

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings ; 

But mercy is above this sceptred sway ; 

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings ; 

It is an attribute to God himself; 

And earthly power doth then show likest God's 

When mercy seasons justice. 



IV LAST YEARS 405 

I only quote this because it so exactly expresses, as it 
seems to me, the musical value of Latinisms in English 
style, their value as alternatives, and their curious faculty 
(perhaps from their mere length) of heightening the 
tone and giving majesty to a sentence. What Old 
English seems to me to lack is the Greek power of con- 
structing a " long resounding line," and I believe that 
the musical instinct of people's ears, craving for greater 
dignity of structure and expression, has had much to 
do with the introduction of Latinisms. 

Moreover Oliphant is wrong, it seems, in following 
Latham as to Rutland and Huntingdon being the places 
where spoken English is closest to book English. I am 
glad of this, for I could not make it square with what 
one knows of one's Anglian folk-divisions. Ellis has 
got a book on the Dialects ready, and they fall quite 
sweetly into the great historic divisions, e.g. the 
Mercian = S. Lancashire, Cheshire, Staffordshire, and 
Derby; the N. Anglian = W. and S.W. of Yorkshire ; 
Middle Anglian = Leicester, Lincoln, Notts, Warwick, 
N. Northampton, and N. Beds ; E. Anglian = Norfolk, 
Suffolk, N. Essex, Cambridge, Hunts. This is a real ser- 
vice done by philology to history, because though one 
knew where the North Angles must be yet nobody has 
ever said from Baeda down where they actually were, and 
much as I loved my Middle-Angles I should have been 
shy of fixing their boundaries. Well it seems that it is 
in the Southern or Central part — Hertford, S. Beds, 
Bucks, Middlesex, N. Surrey, S. Essex, and the adjoin- 
ing parts of Kent — that spoken English and Book 
English be most at one — especially in Hertfordshire. 

After all it is simply there, what has taken place 
everywhere, that the tongue of the capital becomes the 
book tongue. 

I like Comparative Politics — barring the extreme 
diffuseness and bother of its first sixty pages ; but why 
do you say folk " gird " at it? I thought the P.M.G. 
very clever and to a great degree sensible — didn't you ? 

I have gone no whither, but stopped in this London 



4o6 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

fog-land. But England in winter is a cussed country, 
and I can't quite keep aloof from colds. Nevertheless, 
I am not in any very bad way. Good-bye. — Ever yours, 

J. R. Green. 

Do you mark that Shakespeare was a Middle-English- 
man ? ^ 

To Miss von Glehn 

4 Beaumont Street, W., 
January 8, 1875. 

Why do you make me hate art, dear " sad old 
woman " (which ain't proper, I know, but it's your own 
words, it is !) by making Lippo my rival and pitting 
the National Gallery against " No. 4" ? Fresh water 
indeed, when I am inhaling London fog with a con- 
stancy which only lives in realms above where to be 
wroth with those we love — not that that has anything 
to do with my being here, but one's mind floats vaguely 
on the confines of old age, and definiteness glimmers 
far back in the distance among " the proofs which were 
printed when I " {notyou, Olga) " was a guileless child." 
Louise is coming for tea, muffins, and Old Lang Syne. 
WiWyou not come at any rate for the Tea and muffins ^. 
I am always in at four; but a card would fix me at 
home any when, and I want a talk, for things which 
I care a good deal about are going to the bad just 
now in an awful fashion, not to mention that I am 
sinking back under a dispensation of Clark and Nitric 
Acid. 

Thanks about the Zeller. I will write to the 
reviewer. 

Some day, dear Olga, you must take me to your 
poor children in Ormond Street. I live among books 
and friends and am growing hard and selfish. And 

1 The following passage in another letter refers to another of Freeman's crotch- 
ets : "I am always luckless enough to be out when Dawkins calls in town. 
By-the-bye, I find this phrase * in town ' used as I use it here (to your horror) in 
the Long Parliament time by very distinguished patriots." 



IV LAST YEARS 407 

yet, do you know, I who have seen so much terrible 
suffering in my time shrink from seeing a child suffer. 
But you shall take me there. 

Good-bye, dear friend. J. R. Green. 



To E. A. Freeman 

4 Beaumont Street, W., 
January i8, 1875. 

[Green says {Short History^ end of chap, ii.) that 
John's failure to relieve Chateau Gaillard forced him 
into the policy which led to the Great Charter. The 
ruin at Chateau Gaillard " represents the ruin of a 
system as well as of a camp. From its dark donjon 
we see not merely the pleasant vale of Seine, but the 
sedgy flats of our own Runnymede."] 

I have just seen your review of me in the Pall Mall, 
dear Freeman, and I mustn't delay a moment in thank- 
ing you for it. I have never seen a really grander in- 
stance of a resolve to look at a book from the author's 
and not the reviewer's point of view, or a finer apprecia- 
tion of modes of treatment which may happen to differ 
from one's own. You are in fact the first who has 
really pointed out what I wanted to do, and how far I 
have succeeded in doing it. 

On the whole, I go with your criticism. As to the 
sight of Runnymede from Chateau Gaillard, indeed I 
can only say I did see it, and if you didn't it was be- 
cause you went fast to sleep in that pleasant sunshine 
while I sate beside you " mooning " about the Angevins. 
I mean this, that as I " mooned " at Chateau Gaillard I 
saw for the first time (so far as / was concerned) what 
seemed to me the true bearing of the Angevin reigns on 
the fortunes of England and the birth of the Charter. 
It wasn't a metaphor to me then and it isn't now ; and 
why on earth did you go to sleep when you might have 
had such a sight ? And so perhaps I should defend 
the phrase " the New Monarchy," though as Gairdner 



4o8 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

has written objecting to it yet more strongly than you 
do 1 had better reconsider its propriety. 

But what you say about the allusive style, the inver- 
sion of events, and the crowd of small blunders is quite 
true. I have learned many things in my day and some 
time I suppose I shall learn to revise my proofs. A 
good many of the smaller matters I can put right in 
the revision I am making of the book now, but 1 can 
only deal with the stereotype plates to a certain extent, 
and so greater matters must remain for the big edition 
for which Mac is pressing. When I have got things 
right, or righter, in that^ he will perhaps have sold 
enough of Little Book to let me cancel as I want to do 
a vast deal that lies between iElfred's day and Mary's 
day. That is the weakest part of the book. 

As to the general feehng of all the reviewers that I 
haven't carried out my plan after 1660, it would have 
been better had I frankly owned in the Preface how 
this came about. The truth was that when I reached 
1660 I had to face the fact that the book must have 
an end, and that I must end it in about 800 pp. Some- 
thing had to be thrown overboard, and I deliberately 
chose " Literature," not because Dryden or Pope or 
Addison or Wordsworth were strange to me, for I knew 
them better than the earlier men, and have much that I 
want to say about them, but because it seemed to me 
that after 1660 literature ceased to stand in the fore- 
front of national characteristics, and that Science, In- 
dustry, etc., played a much greater part. Now Science 
I like, but " Industry " is dust and ashes to me ; never- 
theless for truth's sake I did violence to the natural 
man and turned away from Sir Roger de Coverley and 
the " Rape of the Lock " to cotton-spinning and Pitt's 
finance. It cost me a lot of trouble, and I knew the 
book wouldn't be as bright and pretty, but still I 
think I did rightly. However, Behnda and Sir Roger 
will brighten the pages of the bigger book, and in- 
deed my fingers itch to be at them. 

But just now I am fit for very little. I caught cold 



IV LAST YEARS 409 

a fortnight ago and have been a prisoner ever since with 
a cough that robbed me of sleep and wore away my 
strength to nothing. I am going to pick up again, it 
seems, but as yet 1 am so terribly weak that the mere 
writing of this letter has utterly tired me. That dear 
boy, the Holy Roman, has looked me up twice and 
cheered me with his pleasant talk. Last night he came 
in at ten after walking twenty miles " in the rain " with 
Leslie Stephen ! If I had the H. R.'s health and vigour, 
what wouldn't I do ? 

I am very wretched, really wretched, about Glad- 
stone's retirement. I can't follow him everywhither, 
but he is my leader, and I don't see any other to lead 
me' on the Liberal benches. And I am cast down by 
the general ingratitude. Everybody I meet (save the 
Holy Roman) seems glad he is gone. It makes me 
want to carry out my notion of writing a history from 
1 81 5 to now, if only to say that I for one love and 
honour Gladstone as I love and honour no other living 
statesman. 

Good-bye, dear Chief. As soon as I can patch up 
so as to fly safely I must run out of this. I can do two 
or three little things abroad. — Ever affectionately yours, 

J. R. Green. 

[In answer to a fresh remonstrance from Freeman on 
the view from Chateau Gaillard Green writes again : 
" I am afraid that, telescope or no, I did see Runny- 
mede from Chateau Gaillard, so I can't help sticking 
to it. Do you remember our day there? — it was just 
one of the great impressions of my life."] 

To E. A. Freeman 

4 Beaumont Street, W., 
February 13, 1875. 

Big Book is begun (which is "half-done" always 
with me), and I see I can make a good book of it. 
But as I foretold it is taking its own shape in spite of 



4IO LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

my wishes to keep it down to four vols., and is pretty 
certain to run to six of some 500 pp. I am musing 
much on " references." " Notes " I won't have, and 
references on a thoroughly full scale (like Norm. 
Conq.) seem to me the right thing when one is ex- 
amining a special period minutely, but not in such a 
case as mine, where after all the narrative must keep 
pretty well to the known and obvious hnes. My 
present notion is to state (as in Little Book, but more 
minutely and critically) the general authorities for each 
period at the beginning of it, and to use special ref- 
erences only in cases where they radically differ and I 
have to choose, or where I am off the general track 
(in Saints' lives, etc.), or quoting documents hke 
Charters, or in like special cases. This is pretty much 
Ranke's way, I see, in his "English History" of the 
Stuart time which I am grinding at now. Its chief value 
seems to me to be for " foreign relations," which are 
wonderfully well done ; its weakest point the consti- 
tutional side. He can't understand, I suppose no 
foreigner can, an adherence to forms and precedents 
even in the face of " state necessities," and so he only 
half sees the meaning of the Parliamentary Contention 
from 1620 to 1640. Still the book is a very notable 
book, and well worth reading. I suppose you have 
got Gardiner's new vols, anent the Duke of Bucking- 
ham. They are a little dull, I fear, but they clear up 
a great lot, especially that great mystery of the war 
with France in 1627. But I can't on Gardiner's own 
facts take his estimate of Buckingham. No doubt he 
was far from being the mere giddy fool Clarendon 
paints him ; he was clever and active enough, but it 
is the cleverness and activity of a clever restless boy, 
not of a man, much less of a statesman. What he 
wanted was to make a noise somehow, and it didn't 
much matter how. I see he is going to make Charles 
and Laud the champions of " free inquiry " against the 
Puritan House of Commons. No doubt Laud's friend- 
ship with Chillingworth, etc., shows the Latitudinarians 



IV LAST YEARS 411 

felt that to a certain extent he was sailing in their 
boat, but only I think as the " party down " always 
travels in that boat, or as Liddon and his gang prattle 
Liberal commonplaces now. Beyond this the view 
seems to me a mere paradox. 

I have settled to go southwards at the opening of 
March with the Macmillans — rather reluctantly for I 
am bitten with my Big Book and want to go on 
with it. But I am better out of England for March, 
no doubt ; it is a long while since I had a holiday, and 
the run to the dear Italy will quicken me, as it always 
does, and send me back fresh to do better and larger- 
tempered work. I shall hurry them to Naples at once, 
and work back slowly northwards as the sun gets 
stronger. 

By-the-bye, thank Florence for the " Spring 
garland " that reached me a while ago. I should like 
to die hearing music and seeing flowers. 

Good-bye. I am fairly well but a little tired with 
working and thinking just now. Little Book had sold 
two days ago 5500 copies, and is going off 100 a day, 
but that won't last. Was I cross and pettish a while 
ago ? Macmillan says you say so. If I was, I am 
sorry, for I owe you much, and am still as ever, 
affectionately yours, J. R. Green. 



To E. A. Freeman 

4 Beaumont Street, W., 
March 21, 1875. 

I still trust you may be able to meet us before we 
go over Channel, dear Freeman. Mrs. Macmillan is 
naturally anxious to be off as early as possible, fearing 
fevers and what not in May, and insists on our starting 
on the 27th. 

H. has bought a Muratori, happy man, and seems 
thoroughly Italy-bitten. I pressed him to take up 



412 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

and do the History of Florence, the finest and most 
beautiful historic subject in the world, finer I think 
(take it all round) than Athens itself. But it could 
only be really written by a man Florentine in feeling — 
with equal sympathies, that is, for politics, commerce, 
art, letters, religion, such as those old Alighieri and 
Cavalcanti had. And then too he must write, and not 
do mere clerk's prose. 

When I come back I shall set about the Library 
edition of Little Book, rewriting much {e.g. from> 
Alfred to John, and Edw. IIL), revising more, and 
adding after 1660 literature and art, etc., and con- 
tinuing in a sort to present day. I think it is righter 
to do this first, though my soul is a-thirst for the 
bigger book I mean in years to come to supersede it 
by. I have already done three chapters (or 150 pp. 
print) of the first volume (" The Old English King- 
dom"), i.e. a chapter on "The English in Old England," 
then " The English Conquest," then " The North- 
umbrian Overlordship." I think you will like the 
two first, especially the Old England one, in which I 
have used up Beowulf., Maine, and Tylor in the 
oddest way. How folk can have neglected Beowulf as 
they have done I can't conceive. Grant the difficulty 
about the date of the present song, one only needs 
read it to see that the whole air of the song is of the 
very earhest, that the picture of manners and feelings 
it presents is one of an age pre-Christian, etc., and 
that it really carries us back to a Jutland and England 
which our fathers dwelled in. One gets out of it a 
world of knowledge about them, not only about their 
life and warfare, but their art, their civilisation, above 
all their moral feelings. For instance the love of the 
sea is the great ever-recurring theme ; the land is as 
yet unloved, the in-land feared. Now this is just a 
trait which could only come in very early days, and 
yet nobody seems to have noted it one bit. I have 
indulged myself — in the pride of Little Book — in 
purchasing Kemble's Beowulf, two wee vols, for two 



IV LAST YEARS 



413 



guineas : but it is well worth the money. Do you 
know Beowulf? 

Good-bye. Peace be upon your Hacons and Foo- 
chows. I curse the day when I consented to examine 
for the Civil Service and spend this never-to-be-suffi- 
ciently detested March in England. Nevertheless I am 
not much the worse. Whisper " Flowers " in some 
kind Somerleazian ear for me ! Good-bye, but do come. 
— Affectionately yours, J. R. Green. 

I go and see Motley to-morrow ; he sent a pretty 
message. / 



To Mrs. Humphry Ward 
[Fragments.] 



(1875.) 



Siena carried me right away ; it ranks with Verona 
as the two Italian towns I love most henceforth. But 
I am too tired to do Murray^ so I wait till we can 
look over my photographs together when I come down 
to Oxford. As yet the " great " things in my run 
have been the great circle of snow-mountains which 
swept round us at Siena and Milan, the fresh beauty 
of Verona with the snow covering the hills round it, 
the Emperor-reception at Venice, a crowd of golden 
gondolas with mediaeval gondoliers suddenly flooding 
the waters of the Grand Canal like a picture of John 
Bellini or Carpaccio escaped from its frame and gone a 
little mad ; my quiet two hours in the Arena Chapel at 
Padua, and my quiet hour in the Fra Angelico chapel 
at the Vatican (after which Raffselle sinks to the vulgar 
and {illegible) level) ; a great blood-red sunset in the 
Val d'Arno, a great gold sunset in the Maremma (with 
a silver lake of olives in the foreground), and a great 
violet and purple and gold sunset all over the Cam- 
pagna as we entered Rome ; Siena itself, the great 
temples at Paestum after which Pericles sinks into a 
Greek, of the Decadence ; and Garibaldi. 



414 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

It is ever hideous to see him with a group of 
fawning fools about him, but all the horrors of the 
group about him are fading out of my memory, and 
leaving nothing but the bare, brick-floored room, the 
camp bed, the worn homely face, so grand in its utter 
simplicity, the simple chatty address, all softened with 
the weariness of pain, the quiet kindly look of the 
small bright eyes, into which a light — such a light — 
stole once as he recalled a kind act of " you English, 
who have always been so good to me." I came away 
so hushed and stilled (the rest were infinitely amused !) 
from the presence of that greatness, that goodness ! 
Heroem vidi. 

Good-bye, dear M. I am very happy here. The 
A Courts, Halcombe, and other folk are here, so is 
MahafFy, full of Greek things and refusing to look at 
Roman things, to refuse which in Rome argues a divine 
Hellenism. Very happy, but very tired and longing 
for home and the sight and sound of you all. Knock- 
ing about never does me good, but a few weeks' rest 
will put all straight. Little Book still sells 50 a day, 
and is in its fourteenth thousand, whereof let us re- 
joice. Good-bye. Kiss Dolly and give my love to 
Humphry. In spite of all my misdeeds you must 
never doubt of my love for you. — Ever yours, 

J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

Rome, May 4, 1875. 

I have managed to jog on for a month from Turin 
to Paestum with only a couple of letters home, dear 
Freeman, but I mustn't quit Rome again without a 
word to you. Our journey has been a delightful one ; 
the weather all through April was perfect, bright sun- 
shine tempered by cool winds from the Apennines 
and the Alps, where the snow still lay white and deep. 
Now summer has at last broken, and the heat is driving 
us all beaten northward. I won't bother you with all 



IV LAST YEARS 415 

our doings on the regular track ; my aim was in part to 
pick up some places which 1 had been forced to let go 
by in former years, such as Pavia, where three Eton 
masters pronounced themselves " bored beyond meas- 
ure," but which failed to bore me, oddly enough ! I 
came away with a great Lombard fit on and a great won- 
der why somebody hasn't writ a good story of the Lom- 
bard Conquest and Rule. It isn't near so fine a subject 
as one which tempted me in old days before I came 
down to humbler ways and " Short Histories," the story 
of the Goths, but it is easier to manage and full of de- 
lightful outlooks. Hen and chicken I mean to pick 
up going home if I can, as we missed Monza. My 
great new find has been Siena, which henceforth ranks 
with Verona in my fond affection, though Verona looked 
wondrous fair this time with the Alps all a-snow about 
her. Siena has no S. Zeno, but her Duomo is a grand 
thing, a really fine Romanesque nave widening out into 
a low broad dome of the same date, with broad tran- 
septs and choirs grouped round it. I never saw an 
interior more effective, more full of " points of view." 
In picturesqueness of street architecture Siena beats 
Verona all to fits ; the streets are hill lanes, curving and 
mounting and falling in the queerest and most delightful 
way, and tumbhng one out in a stage-surprise fashion 
down break-neck stairs into the grandest Town Square 
in all Italy, with none but fourteenth and fifteenth cen- 
tury things about it and a great tall Town-Tower spring- 
ing up into the blue. I say Square, but it isn't a square 
at all, but an oval dipping in the middle, an old amphi- 
theatre the guide-books say. As for sculptures and 
pictures I say nought, throwing no pearls before the — 
well, the black swans of Somerleaze. Likewise more 
southernly I picked up Passtum, and poured out a Hba- 
tion to Poseidon that I might be suffered to return in 
the Bessemer. But the wine was very bad, and I doubt 
Poseidon, poor old thing, is grown deaf with hearing 
nothing so long. Oh, how jolly it was to feel in Hellas 
at last — never mind which Hellas — in real Hellas, 



41 6 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

though t'other side of the Hadrian Sea ! I felt a bit of 
a glow before even at Pompeii, when I got out of the 
Brighton-and- Burlington-Arcade streets and lighted on 
that grand bit of a Doric Temple, the only rehcs of the 
old Greek town before the Roman-Philisters turned 
it into a fashionable watering-place. My Hellenism, 
however, pales before that of Mahaffy whom we found 
here, here in Rome, refusing with scorn to look at any 
" Roman thing." He was on his way to Athens, and 
simply picking up stray bits of Hellenism, sculptures 
and what not by the road. One of his aims is to verify 
Greek busts ; he doubts " Pericles," and a httle doubts 
Alexander — whereat I wept and fled. Likewise he is 
seeking to know how Hellenic young women kept their 
clothes on, a question wrapt in the deepest mystery, and 
insoluble by the Highest Germany. Perhaps it was too 
insoluble for the Hellenic young women themselves, as 
to judge from the later sculptures they seem soon to 
have dropt the effort to keep their clothes on. Perhaps 
that is why Mahaffy calls the Periclean time the age of 
Decadence. 

Let us chat about Rome. Old Parker is here and 
wondrous civil. I met him on Palatine Sunday sunset, 
and though I was near dropping with fatigue, he trotted 
me over his walls and wolf-caves till nature could stand 
no more. But really he is a good old soul and tells 
one such a lot that one throws him in his Romulus and 
Remus wilHngly. The newest thing on Palatine are 
diggings by the side of the " Steps of Cacus " (Sermone 
Parkerico), where a set of Augustan baths are turning 
up-f-a very early building which P. calls "Temple of 
Jupiter Feretrius," coolly bringing said Jupiter over from 
the Capitol for the purpose. In Forum they are creep- 
ing nearer to the temple of Antoninus and Faustina, 
but Hghting on none save mediaeval remains as yet. 
They are soon going to dig about the Church of Cos- 
mas and Damian, where Parker puts Hadrian's Temple 
of Venus and Rome plus two other temples, though 
(granted the wonderful squashabihty of Roman buildings. 



IV LAST YEARS 417 

which all seem singing " We met, 'twas in a crowd ! ") 
I don't see where he is to find room for them. Till 
he does find room I shall still believe in the old site 
on the top of the Via Sacra. The diggings in Colisaeum 
ruin the look of the building within, but are interesting 
in themselves. At the bottom of one of the corridors 
lies a huge "ship's stocks" all perfect though decayed, 
the stocks from which the galleys were hoisted up into 
the canals above. I was puzzled about these nauma- 
chiae, but Parker speaketh thus, that two or three great 
galley canals, some ten feet deep, ran the whole length 
of the building, that the floor between these was thinly 
flooded with water so as to look like a great lake, that 
the naumachiae consisted not in the galleys poking one 
another, which in parallel canals would be impossible, 
but in the crew of one striving to board the other, that 
when the fight was over the surface water was drawn off^ 
by a great sluice (the water in the canals remaining) and 
the canals boarded over so as to present a great open 
arena. I think this was fairly borne out by the brick- 
work he showed. As for " dens for eighty elephants " 
I pass them by, the sagacity of that wonderful beast 
being perhaps equal to stowing its form into the dens 
archaeologists provide for it by a series of ingenious 
contrivances which my unelephantine mind cannot 
imagine. Likewise I leave the " lifts," unable as I am 
to conceive eighty elephants hoisted, each in his sepa- 
rate bandage, up to the light, as a ridiculus mus. 

This morn at seven stood by my bed the great 
Parker and said, " Let us see the second wall of Rome." 
I went and saw. That is to say I saw somewhat and I 
saw where somewhat else ought to have been to see. 
P.'s notion is that the wall uniting Palatine and Capitol 
passed from the (Coelian) end of the Palatine across or 
near the site of the present Colisaeum, and thence sev- 
ered the Velian from the Esquiline, and so on till it 
turns up again at the Forum of Augustus, then round 
Capitol to river, to Pulchrum Littus and " home again." 
What I saw of this was certainly the great " digging '* 



41 8 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

which cuts off the Velian, one of the grandest fosses in 
the world but not a bit too big for the scale on which 
builders like the builders of the wall on the Aventine 
would build. There was certainly a time when this cut 
the Velian off from the Esquiline, and such a cutting 
off must have united it somehow with the Palatine, no 
doubt, and so far Parker's ground seems good. But at 
the Colosseum end it rests on the number of enormous 
tufa blocks used in the substructures of that Amphi- 
theatre, tufa being a stone never quarried in late times, 
and these blocks being simply from the old wall which 
" lay handy " for Imperial purposes. I own it seems 
possible to me that in a building hastily built and cost- 
ing such enormous sums, the builder might quite con- 
ceivably quarry tufa for the substructures though it had 
long ceased to be used for general building purposes. 
At the other end (Forum of Augustus) we have the 
same question. Undoubtedly there are the tufa blocks 

— used-up relics of the old wall, says Parker. But is 
it not possible to use their presence as a negative of his 
original postulate — that "tufa is never used later," etc. 

— and to say " tufa is so used, and you see it used so 
here by Augustus and in the Colosseum by the Flavians." 
The strongest thing in favour of his theory is his state- 
ment that the base of the Torre de' Conti is of tufa 
blocks ; if so I don't see what it could have been but a 
bastion-tower of this "Two-Hill" wall; but this base 
is now hidden. I am going this afternoon to see the 
Pulchrum Littus, etc., and may perhaps become clearer 
as to this wall, but I don't see as yet that it is proved. 
At the same time the fosse of the Veha is a very strong 
thing, and Parker is at any rate entitled to be listened 
to very carefully on the whole matter. He is really 
very sensible on all subjects save Romulus and Remus. 

I hope you were comfortable in my lodgings. I 
bade them prepare much meat and drink. 
Good-bye. — Ever affectionately yours, 

J. R. Green. 



IV LAST YEARS 419 



To Miss von Glehn 

4 Beaumont Street, W., 
Monday, June 21, 1875. 

I wish you wouldn't make a point of calling on the 
very rare occasions when I steal out from very weari- 
ness of being in and alone, dear Olga. I am going 
out this morning after an imprisonment of a couple 
of days, and a creepy feeling haunts me that on my 
return I shall find a note taunting me with my absence 
and continual festivities ! If you would only behave 
like a sensible Madchen and drop down here bag and 
baggage, occupy the spare bedroom and my new little 
back sitting-room and copy honestly for your living, 
you would banish from your fond fancy this dream- 
image of a strayed Reveller, and see me as I am, the 
most steady and stay-at-home of men. 

As to copying you could really help me greatly if 
you would. But the " would " means that you would 
look on it in a business light, dear Olga, and on me as 
you look on Appleton, if only A. would stump up. 
Otherwise you doom me to copy for myself. Now 
come over and talk sensibly, cara mia arnica, about 
this matter. With you behind me copying and chivy- 
ing, and the press in front of me chivying and print- 
ing, I should soon stumble into the glory of four or 
five octavos. I am musing gloomily on the Pirate 
Copy which has arrived from New York, gorgeous in 
form, and margin, and type, a fine book, but a Felon ! 
As I look on it my dream of a brougham fades away, 
and I fall back on the chance of a market-cart to jog 
through life with. 

Don't let me fade into a " green mist," though I 
am always Green and generally missed. Leave that to 
the Paters. As you know, I shall never be a Pater 
(unless I adopt an orfin and become a deputy- Pater). 
Write a pretty post card and tell me you are coming 
to tea with me on such and such a day in a business- 



420 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

like and affectionate frame of mind. Do, or I will 
write to Seymour Haden for one of his wicked works! 
— Ever affectionately yours, J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

4 Beaumont Street, W., 

September 2, 1875. 

My dear Freeman — I go to Haslemere, the 
Roundells, on the 15th and we can have talk on 
many matters. A little perhaps on the Fraser article, 
which I have now seen, and which is a long and very 
violent attack on me, winding up with a short but 
more violent attack on you. You are a bull-dog, and 
I know not what. My critics come in for almost 
harder condemnation than I myself. The writer is a 
clever man, and clearly a careful and clear-headed 
man, and in spite of his violence of tone I should 
really feel grateful to him for pointing out so many 
blunders which I can correct. But the fact that I can 
correct them shows that I am not the mere historical 
Tichborne he paints me. There are slips, careless and 
discreditable slips, and 1 am sorry for them. But they 
are not blunders which affect the book itself; they 
do not show a real misreading of this period or that 
period ; they are not the sort of errors which betray 
an unhistoric mode of looking at the course of things 
as a whole. There is a good deal of truth in what he 
says about my " incapacity for sustained attention," 
but as you know much of the book was written in 
moments of utter weakness and ill-health, when writ- 
ing at all was distasteful, and nothing seemed worth 
taking pains about. Now I am so much better and 
merrier I wonder how in those years of physical pain 
and despondency I could have written the book at all. 

I have but one wish, and that is to get the book 
right, and I don't like to feel angered at anybody who 
helps me to do this as this Fraser critic does. But, as 
John Morley who has had correspondence with him 



IV LAST YEARS 421 

says, his object is not so much to avenge Truth as to 
avenge Froude, and so he has turned what might have 
been a useful criticism into a fierce attack of a personal 
sort. He sums up all the misprints, gathers all the 
errors which have been pointed out in twenty reviews, 
and so makes a terrible list in which to work out his 
own corrections. But these are far from being in- 
fallible. In what he laughs at as my height of 
blundering, the death-scene of Chas. II., I am follow- 
ing the one account by an eye-witness which exists, and 
he follows clearly only Macaulay's account which is 
inaccurate. So in Richard III.'s case, as Clements 
Markham writes to me, my own statement is right and 
his wrong. 

Anent other matters. I send on your Thierry ref- 
erences by this post to Furnivall. Ranke's use of the 
word " Anabaptist " is not quite the confusion it 
seems. No doubt the Independent or Congrega- 
tionalists had separated from the Anabaptist or Baptist 
congregation before both returned to England in 1640. 
But as opposed to the Episcopalians and Presbyterians 
they were looked on by their opponents, and to some 
extent by themselves, as one body. The real division 
was between the two ideas. Church (Episcopalian or 
Presbyterian) and Congregation (Baptist or Indepen- 
dent). This is the key to the whole period from 1640- 
1660; and as I have said in my book it only ceased 
to exist as a radical division when the Act of Noncon- 
formity threw Presbyterian and Independent and Bap- 
tist together whether they would or no, and superseded 
the old distinction by that of Conformity and Non- 
conformity. During the Civil War the old phraseology 
"Anabaptist" is commonly used for both Baptist 
and Independent, always so by the King in his earlier 
proclamations, if I remember rightly, and to a great 
extent by the Presbyterians. J. R. Green. 



422 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

To E. A. Freeman 

4 Beaumont Street, 
November 1 1, 1875. 

[Professor Stubbs refers to the incident mentioned 
in this letter in his last Statutory Public Lecture, May 
1884. "Some of you I daresay remember a para- 
graph that went the round of the September papers 
years ago ; and told how two persons, a stout and 
pompous professor and a bright ascetic young divine, 
met in a railway-carriage ; how the burly professor 
aired his erudition by a little history lecture (an 
anticipation of the informal instruction of the Com- 
missioners) on every object of interest that was passed 
on the road, and how each of his assumptions and 
assertions was capped by an answer from the ascetic 
divine which showed that he knew it all and knew it 
better. The professor at last, exasperated by the 
rejoinders, broke into a parody of the famous address 
of Erasmus, * aut Morus aut diabolus,' substituting 
for Morus * Johnny Green.' "] 

I am so sorry to have missed you, dear Freeman, 
through my triplet to Oxford, from which I came 
back this even. I should like to have heard news 
from the Hadriatic, especially news with a slight 
flavour of gunpowder about it. How odd it must 
feel to have only a mountain chain between one and 
actual fighting — fighting too which looks like the 
small beginning of so great an end ! Little Evans — 
son of John Evans the Great — has just come back from 
the Herzegovina which he reached by way of Lapland, 
having started from the Schools in excitement at the 
" first " I wrung for him out of the obdurate Stubbs, 
and has brought back lots of odd gems, very Greek 
and very small, with Orphic symbols graven on them, 
too wee for the naked eye to perceive. Did you pick 
up any ? Anent Stubbs, I found the dear old boy 
much adown in soul concerning that story of him and 



IV LAST YEARS 423 

me and the Devil which got into the papers, and which 
made him out, he saith, " a boaster and a blasphemer." 
Likewise he was distraught with coveting Deaneries 
(one of which 1 see has just gone to Burgon ! ^^ prodit 
ergo " from S. Mary's, which they are about to pull 
down). I think I laughed and comforted him out of 
his troubles, and he has promised to turn Liberal if 
Dizzy don't give him Ripon, which Dizzy won't. I 
went to one of his private lectures, and learnt an 
awful lot about the pohtics of Richard IL's time; but 
there were only ten folk there beside myself. Is not 
this abominable ? The old chief groans, and says only 
the Dutchmen over the water appreciate him — they 
h'ave just put him on the commission for editing the 
Pertz series, but so long as you and Bryce and I live 
there will be three Dutchmen this side of the water 
will appreciate him too anyhow ! 

Stubbs is " quite sure " that the heathen are gather- 
ing together against the whole kith and kin of us, and 
that my Irish friends in Fraser and the Dublin are 
only " the first drops of a coming storm," of which 
Max Muller's pamphlet on Theodoric-Dietrich is a 
part. I think this is all fancy, but others say the 
same. Anyhow, if it is to come I hope it will burst 
over you and me and not worry the dear old Professor 
who is terribly sensitive to this sort of writing. I 
dined with Max Muller on Tuesday, and he gave me 
his pamphlet, but said you and he were " old friends " 
and you would understand his views. It seems to me a 
very weak bit of work, and I take it you won't need all 
the health and vigour you have brought home from 
Dalmatia to dispose of it. But if you do anything, 
stick to the Theodoric and Max matter and leave 
Kingsley to quiet. He was a good fellow if he was a 
weak Professor, and you remember he told me frankly 
he gave up his Chair because your criticisms had made 
him feel he never ought to have taken it. Moreover, 
" de mortuis." 

I met Maine and had a long chat with him about 



424 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

you and many things. Likewise Fitz-James Stephen, 
Henry Sidgwick, Venn, Dicey, Lushington, and other 
nice folk, — all members of an Ad Eundem Club on to 
which 1 have been chosen. We dined at Christ Church, 
and strove after dinner to get out of " the House " by 
Canterbury Gate. But we were withstood by a proud 
young porter who would not open save that we produced 
the card of Harcourt with whom we had dined. Now 
Harcourt had left Christ Church a quarter of an hour 
before. So we put three Professors to the front, Maine, 
Bryce, and Henry Smith ; but the proud young porter 
put to flight the three professors. Then we set in array 
the Cambridge men, with Fitz-James Stephen at their 
head ; but the proud young porter drove back the 
Cambridge men. Then we held a Gemot, and I pro- 
posed that we should camp out for the night in the 
midst of Canterbury Mead and renew the fight on 
the morrow. But Bryce the wily one stole from the 
Gemot and privily entreated the proud young porter, 
sending his " Compliments to the Dean," and other 
wiliness, and so being tangled in his talk the warder let 
us go free. But see how great a thing it is to get out 
of " the House " ! 

I stayed two days with Jowett, who thinks rightly 
about the History School, and quite went with me in 
desiring more " book " and less " general views." So 
as I can't get anything done through our own Board of 
Studies, I think I shall strive to move the School through 
Jowett! — Ever affectionately yours, J. R. Green. 

To Miss von Glehn 

4 Beaumont Street, W., 

December 1875. 

I am the most luckless and the most lucky of men, 
— luckless in missing you, — lucky in having such a 
friend ! My birthday is on the 12th, — but I'll shift it 
to the 9th if you like, only it will give me three days 
more in this wretched world which is hardly needful. 



IV LAST YEARS 425 

I like the little picters, — you and I playing with the 
young lambs in our innocent way in Spring-tide, or 
walking together in little pinafores under our big um- 
brella in the snow ! How simple and artless it is, how 
true to our artlessness and simplicity ! I vow I'll go 
and order a green brolly and a pinafore to-morrow ! 

I met Mrs. A. at the Macmillans' t'other night, — 
she was really nice as she always is when she don't mock. 
You and I mock, dear Olga, as busy mockers mock, — 
lightly and gaily, — but there is a terrible something at 
the bottom of Mrs. A.'s mockery which scares me. 

I am going to get up your present, so as to be ready 
for 1876. I have already committed to memory the 
dates and particulars of the four eclipses, and begin to- 
morrow on the Bank holidays and the LawTerms. What 
shall I not owe you ? — Good-bye. J. R. Green. 



To E. A. Freeman 

4 Beaumont Street, W., 
February 26, 1876. 

[Refers to the beginning of the larger history.] 

I saw the Athenaum attack. When the new book 
comes out I expect as much of this as I got praise on 
the appearance of Little Book. There is, for one thing, 
the natural reaction against success ; then there are my 
own faults, which I strive to correct but of which 
plenty are sure to remain ; then there is the ill-will of 
the people who identify me with the " Freeman-school "; 
then there is the inevitable hostility of the " pragmatic 
historians " as the Germans call them, who comprise 
pretty well all the really historic men we have. The 
rest I can bear, but I shall feel keenly the condemna- 
tion of these last, such as Gardiner (just as 1 felt keenly 
those words of Pauli). I respect the men, and I know 
and have always owned how good and valuable their work 
is, nor do I think them at all unjust in denouncing me. 



426 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

It is very natural that, working as they do to bring out 
the actual poHtical facts and clear away loose talk, they 
should look jealously at what is in effect a protest 
against their whole conception of history, and what 
must look to many of them an attempt to bring the 
loose talk back again. I was immensely surprised at 
their praise of Little Book ; it showed me — what I had 
always held — that no Englishman can ever really sink 
into the mere " pragmatic" standpoint of Germans like 
Ranke ; but I felt then and I feel still that after all 
there is a contradiction between their notion of history 
and mine, and I shan't blame them if they fight for 
their own. 

For me, however lonely I feel at times when I think 
of this, " I can no other," as Luther says. Every word 
I have written in reviews and essays through the last 
ten years went to the same point, to a protest, that is, 
against the tendency to a merely external political view 
of human affairs, and to a belief that political history 
to be intelligible and just must be based on social his- 
tory in its largest sense. I have never wavered from 
this. Looking, of late, over the notes I made years 
ago from books like Orderic and M. Paris, I see in me 
the same conviction, the same attempt to get at men's 
lives and thoughts and feelings as a necessary condition 
of judging their political acts. Well, I may be altogether 
wrong in my theories, but it is better for me to hold to 
what I think true and to work it out as I best can, even 
if I work it out badly, than to win the good word even 
of some people I respect and of other people I love (for 
you, dear Freeman, would like it all the better if I wrote 
in your way and not in mine, which is natural enough). 
These forthcoming four volumes will do for a rough 
sketch of what I mean ; if I live, I can make them better 
and better ; if not, I shall have said my say, even with 
" stammering lips." 

Two things, at any rate, I am certain of, — first, how- 
ever imperfect my work may be, it goes on the old 
traditional line of English historians. However 



IV LAST YEARS 427 

Gibbon may have been misled by Voltaire's habit of 
massing his social facts in chapters apart ; however weak 
Hume's social attempts may be ; however much 
Macaulay may look on social facts simply as external 
bits of ornament, all profess the faith I hold. Amidst 
all Palgrave's vague rhetoric, he throughout strives to 
ground his facts on a realisation of the moral and 
reHgious temper of the time. 

And then, secondly, I see that even those English 
historians who nowadays strive to be merely external 
and " pragmatic " (not being High Dutchmen) cant. 
Contrast your tone with PauH's for instance, or even 
Gardiner's with Ranke. We English folk live in free 
human air, and it is impossible to us to sink into 
mere " paper-chasers." And so I don't doubt that 
the English ideal of history will in the long run be 
what Gibbon made it in his day, the first in the world ; 
because it can alone combine the love of accuracy 
and external facts with the sense that government and 
outer facts are but the outcome of individual men, and 
men what body, mind, and spirit make them. — Yours 
affectionately, J. R. Green. 

[The view of history here put forward may be illus- 
trated by a sentence in which Green on one occasion 
expressed his feeling as to the history he desired to 
write. " I shall never be content till I have superseded 
Hume, and I believe I shall supersede him — not be- 
cause I am so good a writer, but because, being an ade- 
quate writer, I have a larger and grander conception 
than he had of the organic life of a nation as a whole."] 

To E. A. Freeman 

4 Beaumont Street, W., 
March i8, 1876. 

[The Stray Studies from England and Italy, here 
called " Square Book " from its original form, had just 
appeared, and Freeman had complained of some of the 



428 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

papers included. In 1875 Green visited Sir M. E. 
Grant-DufF at Hampden, who thus describes the 
impression made on him : " Green, whom the more I 
see of him, the more I think likely to be, if he lives, 
the greatest English historian who has yet been, with 
the exception of Gibbon" {Diary, i. 116). "I never 
had it so much brought home to me," he wrote to 
Green in 1883, "that the real historian is an animal 
different from and of a superior order to ordinary 
human beings who possess the power of narration as I 
did when I saw the effect produced on your mind by 
the view from Whiteleaf Cross." The passage in the 
History (vol. iii. p. 176) was, as Green told Sir M. E. 
Grant-Duff in 1877, inspired by his drives through the 
Hampden country.] 

My dear Freeman — Thanks many for your cor- 
rections and suggestions on my sheets, — of course your 
praise was an encouragement just now. I will go over 
the whole with a view to removing that air of cock-sure- 
ness which you notice, and which would certainly be a 
fault. But substantially I have in no case (at least 
consciously) gone beyond what Stubbs and Guest have 
said before me. Only when one puts their conclusions 
by themselves as facts, and works them up into pictures 
by help of a study of the geographical and archaeological 
data which one can get hold of, no doubt the result is a 
bit more positive than one intended. But I think this 
can be remedied by a few words here and there. I still 
look on the whole story as one which is a mere outline 
of what it might be if one could devote oneself to a full 
and detailed study o^ the ground , and of the remains — 
roads — inscriptions, etc., of Roman Britain. The bit of 
work I did for myself (having no Guest help) in the 
campaign against Aylesbury, Newbury, etc., which I was 
able to study by Grant-Duff's driving me about when I 
stayed at Hampden showed me how much might be done. 
What did you think of those coincidences of the old 
Roman Town-boundaries with the modern county- 



IV LAST YEARS 429 

borders ? I own I leapt for joy when I saw for the 
first time why Oxfordshire was shaped Hke a double 
pudding bag. 

My own belief is that Engle is the older name of the 
whole folk. But 1 have no right to set myself against 
all you wise people on the point, — and above all in 
a popular book where I can't give my reasons. So 
I will change matters as Stubbs and you wish, — for 
the present. 

I took it that most people would say what you say 
about the lighter papers in Square Book. But I resolved 
to have one book at least to my own taste when I have 
to write volume after volume in compliance with other 
people's taste ; and as, rightly or wrongly, I think 
" Children by the Sea " the most perfect hterary thing 
I have ever done, and as I have no sort of sympathy 
with the feeling which puts social essays below historical 
volumes, or Addison beneath Gibbon, I told Macmillan 
he must publish this book for my reading, and not for 
the world's. He has made so much from Little Book 
that he can afford to drop a couple of hundred on 
" Square." 

I have just looked over your set of Architectural 
Essays in Italy. They are full of valuable and sugges- 
tive matter ; is it too late to suggest that you should use 
them as materials for a book rather than as essays in 
their present form ? At any rate, if you publish them 
as they are, I think you would greatly increase the value 
of the book, and further its sale, by putting at the very 
beginning a paper on early Romanesque, expandingwhat 
you have said at the opening of " Romanesque Archi- 
tecture in Venetia," and pointing clearly out the general 
conclusions to which your Italian studies in that matter 
have led you. This should be well illustrated with little 
drawings of such things as "mid-wall shafts" of which 
ninety-nine readers out of a hundred know nothing, etc. 
These little engravings inserted in the page are now 
done easily and very cheaply, and save a vast deal of 
*' explaining " in words. With this prefatory paper the 



430 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

reader would have a clue to the thought and purpose 
of the after essays which would double his interest. I 
am quite sure that it would have a great effect on the 
circulation of the book. But 1 don't think you must 
expect this to be large, as so few people care about the 
technical part of architecture. I am afraid, too, that, — 
in spite of your explanation, — the geographical whirl- 
ings about from one part of the world to another, and 
yet more the chronological backwards and forwards will 
be much against it. However, I need not bother you 
with these things as I submitted them to you before, and 
you were unable to avail yourself of them. But I think 
you might consider my suggestion about the introduc- 
tion. 

I note a phrase which might be mistaken about the 
Fondaco dei Turchi at Venice. It belonged not to 
Turks but to Venetian merchants trading with Turkey, 
just as an E. India House did not belong to Hindoos ! 

I have tried three people with " Venetian March," 
and they all take it for a piece of music. Could you 
say " Border Land " ? 

I am still, — as I was years agone, — in amaze at your 
hatred of Italian names for Itahan churches. I could 
bear every name in English or every name in Latin, — 
eccentric as the last would be. But why "we have 
spoken of the Duomo of S. Fredianus, and of S. 
Michael" ? No Lucchese person says S. Fredianus or 
S. Michael — no person talks of S. Paulus of London 
or drives to S. Dionysius near Paris. It looks simply as 
if you had a contempt for Italian as a language which 
one ought to avoid using even when dealing with Italy. 
" S. Petronio " at Bologna is known everywhere, — why 
talk of S. Petronius ? I have stayed a month in Verona 
and never heard of " S. Firmus." At any rate, if you 
do this to Italy do it to Germany and France. I must 
say it rather riles me that you should make people think 
you despise the dear land over the Alps. Good-bye. — 
Ever affectionately yours, J. R. Green. 



IV LAST YEARS 



To E. A. Freeman 



431 



4 Beaumont Street, 
March 21, 1876. 

My dear Freeman — In working your corrections 
into my text, I find myself in a difficulty which I must 
face before I can go on printing, and in which / should 
be glad of your help. As I told you, I made up my 
mind to yield to you, Stubbs, and Bryce on the " Eng- 
lish " question ; and I have been going through my 
proofs resolving the word whenever it occurs into " Jute " 
or " Saxon " as the case may be. But I find I must have 
s.ome rule to go by, and as yet I am without one. I find 
myself without any sort of guide as to the date when it 
becomes right to speak of a Jute or a Saxon as English- 
men. The old rule was to state that in 800 Ecgberht 
made Angle and Saxon into Anglo-Saxon ; and that 
in 1066 William made Anglo-Saxon + Norman into 
Englishmen. Then came the Lappenberg sera which 
took them as Anglo-Saxon from the beginning till 
1066, and then made Anglo-Saxon -f- Norman into 
Englishmen. Then came the early-Freeman-and-Guest 
time in which the Anglo-Saxon was wholly abolished, 
and Englishmen were held to have been in the begin- 
ning, are now, and ever shall be. Now we have reached 
the late-Freeman-and-Stubbs-and-High-Dutchmen- 
time in which Englishmen are held not to have been in 
the beginning, but to have come into being — when? 

I have never seen any way of accounting for the use 
of the word " English " by a West-Saxon or a Jute at 
any time, save by taking it to have been throughout 
the general name of the whole people, the older gen- 
eral name which underlay the special designations of 
Saxon or Jute. On any other theory one has to sup- 
pose a taking up of the name at some time or other, 
for which there is no evidence, and at a time which it 
is impossible to fix. 



432 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

But I really don't want to raise the question in 
general. I am quite ready to give way — only I do 
want some sort of rule. As to the only people I really 
care about (for you know I was born the right side of 
the Thames) there is no difficulty. Thank God they 
always called themselves Englishmen (for with Baeda's 
" Angli " staring me in the face I will have nothing 
to do with making imaginary differences between 
" Engle " and " English," making in other words one 
people out of a substantive, and another out of an 
adjective !). It is merely for those wretched Jutes and 
benighted Saxons that I am concerned. When — on 
the present theory — am I to take it that God gave 
them the grace to bear the name of Englishmen ? — 
Ever yours in haste, J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

4 Beaumont Street, 
March 24, 1876. 

Thanks for your explanations of this morning, my 
dear Freeman. They come to this, I suppose, that Jutes 
and West-Saxons and East-Saxons can only properly be 
called English from iElfred's time; but that by a con- 
ventional usage the term may be employed beforehand 
in general cases, so as to express the after-unity of the 
people at large, and our identity with them. You 
would limit this " beforehand " by the date 449 while 
/ carry it further back. But if one is careful to 
point out that whether on this or that side of 449 
the word is used in this conventional and anticipatory 
way ; and if one removes (as I removed a month 
ago) all phrases which imply a real use of the word 
by the people themselves, I don't think any one can 
reasonably object. And this I think I can do without 
" notes " or " appendices." Of course my only aim is 
to drive into my readers' heads from the very opening 
that they are not reading about " furriners," and per- 
haps what you denounce as over-statements in Little 



IV 



LAST YEARS 433 



Book have done good in this way, just by dint of 
their being over-statements. 

But as I said before, speaking simply for myself, 
and not as a writer, etc., I see only one fact — that at 
the very first time these people get a chance of telling 
us about themselves in their own tongue, they call all 
(Jutes and Saxons alike) English, and the tongue of 
all English too. Of this being the result of a "pro- 
cess " of change, of their " beginning to feel one people 
and call themselves by a common name," I see no 
evidence whatever. . . . 

It is odd that I was saying to Bryce two nights 
back just what you say in your note, that the one 
difficulty really in the way of the whole matter is the 
existence and greatness of the Old Saxon. 

Pray pat me on the head for my submissiveness and 
obedience. — Ever yours, J. R. Green. 

To A. Macmillan 

4. Beaumont Street, June 15, 1876. 

My dear Macmillan — I have now given the 
subject of an Historical Review all the consideration 
I can, and have come to a definite conclusion that 
none of the projects which have as yet been suggested 
is likely to command a practical success. 

It is necessary at the outset to recall what the 
original notion of such a review was, and why such an 
organ was desired. What Ward and Bryce wanted 
was just what Germany and now France possesses, a 
purely scientific organ of historical criticism, and means 
of information as to the progress of historical study 
at home and abroad. This was a perfectly definite 
scheme, and one of real utility ; one too which would 
undoubtedly raise sympathy and secure even unpaid 
support among a certain section of historic scholars. 
But its character was to be scientific and not popular, 
and the literary tone of articles was to be entirely 
subordinate to their critical character. 



434 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

I recall this because it marks precisely the aim 
which the projectors of the Review had at first, and 
the aim which, amidst all subsequent changes, they have 
kept in view. To the purely historic scholars who would 
form the backbone of its staff, the end of the Review 
would be this and no other. If literary treatment or 
notices of current events or political events were ad- 
mitted, they would simply be regarded as means of se- 
curing the publication of the critical matter which they 
succeeded in floating. But they would create no interest 
or next to none among the writers who would under- 
take the purely historical work. Their interest would 
be wholly with what remained of the original plan. 

Such a plan being found impracticable, I suggested 
the modification of it which has served as a basis of our 
negotiations. Retaining the strictly historical character 
of original articles, reviews, and notes of historic prog- 
ress at home and abroad, I suggested that in these 
as in all its contents literary excellence should be 
required ; and that a larger circulation might be ob- 
tained : (i) by including in each number an elucida- 
tion of some pressing subject of the day from a purely 
historic point of view {e.g. in this present state of 
the Turkish question, a detail of the internal history 
of Turkey, its reforms, etc., from the close of the 
Crimean War till now ; or should questions affecting 
the Church come into prominence an examination of 
the relative weight of the Church and the Noncon- 
formist bodies at each stage in our history from the 
Reformation) ; (2) by inserting in each number careful 
and philosophical biographies of persons of contem- 
porary eminence; (3) by claiming for historic treat- 
ment the outer history of literature, science, etc., in 
their direct relations to national life ; and (4) by closing 
each number with a summary of European events 
during the quarter, done by some semi-political semi- 
scientific person like Grant-Duff. I still think this 
plan the best which has been proposed ; but the objec- 
tions to it are grave. It falls, like all schemes of the 



IV LAST YEARS 435 

kind, between two stools. Such a review would in 
great part be too scientific for the general reader — 
not indeed to read, but to take any real interest in. 
On the other hand, it would be too popular in form to 
secure any warm or enthusiastic sympathy from those 
who desire a scientific organ of historical research. 
Its almost inevitable tendency would be as the desire 
for "success" pressed on editor and publisher to 
become more and more popular, and less and less 
scientific in tone. And this would simply bring the 
Review to the level of those Quarterlies which at 
present exist — better written, it may be — and with a 
greater repute for " information " and accuracy, but 
still hardly distinguishable from a very superior num- 
ber of the Edinburgh^ and cut off from resources 
which the Edinburgh possesses, — the resource of a 
settled political tradition, and above all the ability to 
secure in each quarter what variety of subjects one likes. 
Remember what reviews of travels, for instance, or 
of great scientific works, or of great literary works, 
have done for our Quarterlies, and consider what would 
be the chance of a rival review, hardly distinguishable 
from them in character by the general reader, and cut 
off from such subjects of general interest as these. 

It was, I think, a just sense of these difficulties, 
and of the chance which such a plan presented of 
compromising the political character of the review 
without really securing a popular sale, which made 
Ward press for a more distinct political line. To 
this, however, the objections seem to me fatal. It 
would militate even more against the historical au- 
thority which such an organ was intended to possess ; 
it would inevitably cut off^ from it — if not the whole 
literary aid — at any rate the warm sympathy of some 
of our more prominent historical scholars (I am assum- 
ing the tone of its politics to be liberal) ; while the 
political divisions of the liberal party just now would 
throw its political direction into the hands of some 
section of Liberalism, whose support would be of little 



436 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

value. The more I reflect the less chance of success 
does there seem to be for either of these two last- 
named schemes, — my own or Ward's. I am inclined to 
think that what those who need an historic organ had 
better do, would be to recur to the original plan of a 
small and purely scientific pubhcation, counting on a 
small circulation supported by a list of subscribers, and 
written without payment. This, however, requires 
simply a printer, not a publisher. 

For myself, even independently of these general 
considerations as to the success of such a review 
I do not see in any case my way to undertaking the 
conduct of it. It is better to say plainly that as 
things stand now I do not possess that confidence of 
historic scholars which the editor of such an organ 
must possess. I should be looked upon then by the 
bulk of them as a person imposed on the review by 
the unhappy necessity of securing a publisher and a 
popular circulation, and as the representative not of the 
scientific but of the non-scientific element in it. The 
justice of this is not to the purpose here ; but I must 
own that for my own part I feel my historic ten- 
dencies to be sufficiently at variance with the general 
tendency of historic research just now to give such 
sentiments a certain colour of truth. In any case, their 
existence would be fatal to that warm support which 
could alone enable an editor to conduct such a review. 

I have other and as important work to do, and 
my health gives me small time to do it in. I own too 
I shall feel freer in the doing it if I am not placed in 
an official relation towards a number of historic scholars 
who sympathise little or not at all with what I want 
to do in the writing of history, and who would prob- 
ably feel themselves disagreeably compromised by a 
connection with the doer of it. I have, therefore, 
resolved to decline finally the post of editor of such 
a review. 

I fear this is a terribly long letter. But I do not 
wish to return to the subject, unless new and more 



IV LAST YEARS 437 

likely plans are suggested, and I thought it better to 
say here all I had to say. — I am, dear Macmillan, 
faithfully yours, J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

4 Beaumont Street, W., 
August 30, 1876. 

[Freeman's new works are Historical and Archi- 
tectural Sketches^ 1876; and History and Conquest of 
the Saracens^ 1856 (new edition in 1876).] 

You are responsible for grave excesses last night, 
dear Freeman; for the arrival of your two new books 
kept me up to what Clark calls " that Godless hour of 
midnight." However, I ran through all the Saracens 
and most of the Sketches before I got to bed, which 
shows that you have one devoted reader in the world. 
The Saracen is an old friend, which I found I remem- 
bered well though I read it seven years ago, and which I 
still put in some ways high among your works. That 
is to say it condescends a good deal more to your 
readers than your later work does. When you wrote 
it you had clearly a much closer sense of what people 
know, and what people don't know, than you have now. 
Perhaps this is because you were addressing not readers 
but hearers — for I noted the same characteristics in your 
Welsh address which has served as accompaniment to 
my luncheon. By-the-bye, I rejoiced much over " the 
sacred Tor" of Glastonbury. In this way the book 
stands wonderfully in contrast with the Sketches, which 
assume in their readers a wondrous knowledge of his- 
torical and Italian matters — not to mention " midwall 
shafts." Of course, I wish you could have found time 
to put in two or three chapters on " Crusades," "Turks," 
and "Fall of Mahommedanism" down to Khiva and 
Bokhara conquests, but you are right not to stop more 
important work for this. I noted too with a Httle 
amusement what I always note in myself, the inevitable 
effect of Gibbon on one's style after a good reading of 



438 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

him. " I hasten to account," and a lot of such phrases 
are absolute Gibbon. By-the-bye, do you really adopt 
the burning of Alexandrian library by Omar ? 

For me — I am just now pretty well, and so working 
hard. I find myself obliged to let my book take its 
own way, and so have only got to the eve of the 
Conquest It is possible after all that my first 
volume may not get beyond 1070. What makes it 
so big is the attempt I am making to take a more 
European view of matters than I did, and I find that 
" ultramarine " is a colour which spreads a good way 
over the canvas. Just now I am wild with excitement 
at the results which come out if one works English, 
Norman, and Papal history side by side — say from 
1047—53. Of course my conclusions or rather sugges- 
tions may turn out very wild hitting ; but with me the 
impulse to try to connect things, to find the " why " of 
things, is irresistible ; and even if I overdo my political 
guesses, you or some German will punch my head, and 
put things rightly and unintelligibly again. I can only 
work in my own way, and when I find facts which 
won't tell or even hint their " why " I find I lose all 
pleasure in working and simply take to Miss Braddon. 

There is a chance that — if other folks will go — I 
may go to Algiers for the winter instead of Capri. I 
should like to touch the East — even if it were but with 
one little finger — and an East too French-varnished. 
I fancy too that just as I got a new way of looking 
at Northern matters from my stay in Italy, I may get 
a new way of looking at all Christian and European 
matters by sojourning on African ground a few months. 
A " nigger-view " of history would be a novelty. 

Let us hope you have set somebody writing a 
History of Wales — even if it starts a bit short of the 
Flood. One is really all at sea. For instance, I see you 
make Cadwallon (Hevensfield C.) a Strathclydean 
leader somewhere. Why? The common books about 
Wales say " ap-Gwynnedd." Of course Strathclyde is 



IV LAST YEARS 439 

the likelier for the run of the story, but I did not 
venture to doubt the Welshmen. 

Good-bye. — Ever yours affectionately, 

J. R. Green. 

To Mrs. Humphry Ward 

4 Beaumont Street, W., 

October 9, 1876. 

I read your I. R. on Spanish chronicles with a good 
deal of pleasure, dear M. I hope it means you are setting 
in earnest to the history of early Spain. Every cobbler 
loves his own last, and you won't quarrel with me for 
preferring English to Spanish history, or for demurring 
to your statement about the superiority of Spanish 
chronicles to those of other lands. Surely a series 
which begins in the thirteenth century is a very young 
and pickaninny series. How can it compare in interest 
with English or Italian or German or French chronicles ; 
and as to the individual chroniclers has Spain any really 
of the same intellectual level as Villani, Froissart, and 
Commines, the German historian of Frederick I., or the 
English historian of Henry III.? However you are 
quite right to fall in love with your subject, — nobody 
does any good with any work he does not fall extrava- 
gantly in love with. That is why all the cool-headed 
young Oxford men fail to do any good in the world. 
And with what you say of the dramatic superiority of 
Spanish history up to Ferdinand and Isabella, I go 
wholly. It is great luck to have the Moor always to 
peg away at ; greater luck to have two religions, two 
civilisations, two social and ecclesiastical developments 
always face to face. I have but one fear. It is sug- 
gested by your own talk about Arabic at the end of the 
article. Shall you wait to begin till you can read 
Arabic? Pray do not fix the appearance of the book 
for the Greek Kalends. It is only the weak people who 
long for an impossible perfection, and so never reach 
even the possible imperfect. 

Anyhow, dear M., begin^ and begin your book. 



440 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Don't do " Studies " and that sort of thing. I see how 
much time I wasted in that way, — time I can't get 
back again. Begin your book and begin it at the begin- 
ning. One's book teaches one everything as one writes 
it ; it forbids one to pick and choose ; it forces one to 
face the difficulties ; it gradually gets a power of its own 
over one and makes one think and write better than one 
could think and write apart from it. Above all, it takes 
hold of one. It draws one to the desk. It creates a 
taste for work and for continuous work ; it begets a 
longing to see the thoughts that crowd on one as one 
works it out, — to see the thing "finished." 

To E. A. Freeman 

25 CONNAUGHT StREET, 

December i, 1876. 

\Ginx s Baby (1870), which made a great sensation 
at the time, was written by Mr. J. E. Jenkins, member 
for Dundee from 1874 to 1880.] 

You see I am in new quarters, dear Freeman, — 
quarters very nigh to Bryce, with a noisy street afore 
me, and behind me a quiet graveyard where lieth 
Laurence Sterne. I have got four rooms, so that I 
can buy a few more books, — in these days of Norman 
Conquests in five volumes of a thousand pages each 
books are great space devourers, — and have made 
them a bit daintier and prettier than the rooms of old. 
When shall you come and see them ? 

Possibly you may come to the Conference on East- 
ern matters. I have been to one Committee meeting, 
gaining little from it of instruction in Turkic affairs, but 
getting a sight of " Ginx " without his Baby, whereat I 
rejoiced. Likewise I rejoiced to see the poet Morris, 
— whom Oliphant setteth even above you for his un- 
Latinisms — brought to grief by being prayed to draw 
up a circular on certain Eastern matters and gravelled 
to find " English words." I insidiously persuaded 
him that the literary committee had fixed on him to 



IV LAST YEARS 441 

write one of a series of pamphlets which Gladstone 
wants brought out for the public enlightenment, and 
that the subject assigned him was " The Results of the 
Incidence of Direct Taxation on the Christian Rayah," 
but that he was forbidden to speak of the " onfall of 
straight geld," or other such " English " forms. I left 
him musing and miserable. I am still loyal to the great 
man at Hawarden ; but why does he set us little folk 
to speak and himself so resolutely hold his peace ? 
And why does he want us to publish a paper called 
The Star in the East ? I suggested that we should ask 
him if we could get the Magi to edit it. Seriously, I 
don't think any good thing will come out of the Con- 
ference. The people that know anything about the 
question in it are (save Bryce and one or none else) 
mere " Christian sympathisers," and the people who 
would take a really political view seem to know nothing 
of the facts. I think you will like Bryce's article in 
the Fortnightly. It is a great comfort to me to have 
him so near, and to find our opinions so at one on these 
Eastern matters. You know that he brought back a 
fever from Ararat. He says Poti, but Ararat sounds 
better. Anyhow he is getting all right again now, and 
we have pretty talks on politics and history. 

I am wonderfully well and cheery just now ; and so 
I could not make up my mind to run off to the Nile, 
and leave my book to gaze on Khedives and hippo- 
potami. But I get on very slowly. I have done all 
the Godwine and Harold part ; but the chapter on the 
Ethelred time was so bad — such a mere string of facts 
and battles — that I have cancelled it, and am now 
musing how to make a better one. I quite see that 
from Eadred's day, at any rate, the upgrowth of feudal- 
ism, and its fight with the monarchy which has just 
come so strong and great out of the war with the 
Danelagh, is the true keynote of our history : I see, 
too, that while oversea feudalism was strong enough to 
get its own way, here it wasn't ; and that it was the 
neutralisation of both forces, monarchy and feudalism. 



442 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

by their almost balanced strife which left England open 
to the Swegen and Cnut attack. The thing is getting 
clear to me, but I shall have to sit and moon over the 
fire a bit more on these winter evenings before I get it 
quite straight and to my liking. After that, things are 
pretty manifest : though I hope I haven't gone too far 
in striving to bring out the relation of England to the 
European world in Godwine's day. The more and 
more I study him, the greater he seems. But Harold ! 
I cannot feel any interest in him ; he is so dull, so 
exactly the glorified image of the respectable grocer 
who wishes to die a vestryman ! By-the-bye, imagine 
my delight on finding t'other day the notes of " Sen- 
lac " I made on the ground when we visited Battle to- 
gether long agone. Likewise I have routed out my 
notes made on our Norman tour. They brought back 
such a flood of pleasant recollections. 

I have done learning to speak French, being able 
just to stammer along, and shall begin German in 
January, cursing much the people who would build the 
tower of Babel. Then, thank God, I don't see that I 
need learn one language more. I met Sweet t'other 
day, and talking of Dictionaries he said the only Eng- 
lish Dictionary he should care a straw for would be 
one of spoken, not written, English. He seemed to re- 
gard literature as a blot and excrescence upon language 
which could not be sufficiently abhorred. After all, 
there was a good deal of truth in his talk. So he 
wants children taught to conjugate, " I'm going, you're 
going, he's going," and " I'll go, we'll go," and so on, 
as people speak, and " ain't," " aren't," " shan't " 
adopted as grammatical forms. To all which I in- 
clined mine ear, loving much the confusion of school- 
masters and grammatici. 

Good-bye ! How's Ruddy Bill,^ the real old EngHsh 
gentleman, as you want us to hold him, getting on ? 

J. R. Green. 

1 "William Rufus is my ideal gentleman," Freeman says in a letter to Miss 
Thompson. — Life, ii. p. 80. 



IV LAST YEARS 443 

To E. A. Freeman 

2^ CONNAUGHT StREET, 

December 21, 1876. 

My dear Freeman — I am glad Pauli is coming 
to a righter mind. Just now I am doing William and 
Harold — it is curious in reading my books over again 
to see how little time and fresh knowledge have changed 
the views I took of the house of Godwine ten years ago, 
as I find them written in my notes and imagination. 
It is a great comfort to have their side put as thoroughly 
as it ever can be put in your book ; 1 feel that I know 
now all that can be said against the views I hold, and 
the fact that reading and re-reading what you say I still 
feel their case to be so weak gives me some sort of 
hope that I am not being misled by mere " fads " and one's 
natural ingenuity. It certainly does seem to me that 
the success of William was due mainly to the long- 
nursed ambition of Godwine and his house. But though 
I have read and re-read every word of your big volumes 
and am ever turning back to them, I have made up 
my mind to make no reference to you in any points 
where we disagree, but only where we agree. I will 
give my authorities, but I will take my chance of 
people's saying, "On this point he has not weighed 
what Mr. F. has said," rather than enter into controversy 
with a master and a friend. I tell you this that when 
you see the book you may understand why I speak and 
why I don't speak. Generally indeed I think the plan 
is the right one : it takes away from one's notes that 
air of controversy and personal conflict which is so 
odious in itself and so likely to hinder the just con- 
sideration of historical facts. I used to be eager for 
fighting, but as one nears forty one gets peaceful, and 
forty is only twelve months off from me now. . . . 

A. is full of schemes for a Liberal paper ; but I take 
little interest in it, for it seems to me that the Liberalism 
of the " Academical Liberals " is but half-an-inch in front 
of that of the Whigs, and that of the Whigs but an 



444 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

eighth of an inch in front of that of the Tories, and 
non euro de minimis^ as Lord Eldon used to say. The 
only questions I care for are questions fifty years ahead 
and which I shall never live to see even discussed, such 
as the entire revolution of our higher education, Oxford 
and Cambridge having previously been ground into 
powder and the place thereof sown with salt and left as 
a place for dragons. 

My own Christmas dinner I take for the first time 
in my life with my family. It is so odd to think of 
myself as an uncle. I should have laughed at twenty 
if one had told me that forty would find me wifeless 
and childless. But so it is, and I shall go and play 
" Uncle John " at Christmas to the children of wiser 
and happier folk. . . . Fare thee well. — Affectionately 
yours, J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

25 CONNAUGHT StREET, 

February 1877. 

My dear Freeman — Bismillah ! you are a great 
man : multitudes rise to greet thee and Ex-Premiers 
visit thee ! Humphrey Sandwith — whom I have just 
met all brown from Servia — tells me he is coming down 
to you, as if Somerleaze were now the Mecca of the East- 
ern Question. Ah well ! let the sunshine come and the 
summer-tide, and I will do my pilgrimage to Mecca ! 

But it is not of the Eastern Question 1 want to write 
now, but of another. I have induced Macmillan to 
follow up my Short History with a series of like books 
— like, 1 mean, in form and extent; and I am pressing 
Bryce to do a Short History of Rome. Tou I want to 
press for a Short History of the Greek Folk. You 
sketched for me one day your notion of what such a 
book should be — the story of Hellas the Sporadic in 
all its geographical and temporal extension — and it 
has been haunting me ever since. I am sure we should 
both die the happier were it done. ... I have no 
doubt such a book would beat the Smiths and the 



IV LAST YEARS 445 

Schmitzes out of the field, and yield you a good annual 
return. Moreover it would do more to get right 
notions into the heads of the Many-Folk, of Herr 
Omnes, than a thousand Grotes. Moreover it would 
put Greek History for the first time on a right basis, 
and we should die with the thought that something had 
been done for Hellas ! . . . — Ever yours, dear F., 

J. R. Green. 

To Miss Stafford 

Februarf 2, 1877. 

I am still working fast and well, having at last 
started fairly on the beginning of my three volumes 
after dabbling in them at every other point than the 
beginning. I feel now the enormous difference in point 
of literary power — power I mean especially of handling 
my materials — between now and the day when I wrote 
my Short History. I had written heaps of things before, 
of course, essays and papers and the like ; but between 
these and the writing a book there is a great gulf, and 
in some ways the very excellences I had fancied in 
writing these small things stood in my way when setting 
to the larger' task. All through the earlier part of 
" Shorts " I see the indelible mark of the essayist, the 
" want of long breath," as the French say, the tendency 
to " little vignettes," the jerkiness, the slurring over 
the uninteresting parts, above all the want of grasp of 
the subject as a whole. I learnt my trade as I wrote 
on; a different sort of work begins with Edward I.; 
but it is not till I reach the New Learning that I feel a 
freedom from that fatal " essayism." I think that my 
new book will be pretty free from it throughout — at 
least I am striving to make it free — the only dread is 
lest in my sternness of resolve I make it dry and dull 
(certainly, as far" as work goes, it will be a far more 
thorough book than " Shorts "). 

You see I should make a harsher critic of my own 
work than any of my reviewers. I hope I always shall. 
But I love it too, though I see its faults. 



446 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

February z\, 1877. 

Last night I met Gladstone — it will always be a 
memorable night to me ; Stubbs was there, and Goldwin 
Smith and Humphrey Sandwith and Mackenzie Wal- 
lace whose great book on Russia is making such a stir, 
besides a few other nice people ; but one forgets every- 
thing in Gladstone himself, in his perfect naturalness 
and grace of manner, his charming abandon of con- 
versation, his unaffected modesty, his warm ardour for 
all that is noble and good. I felt so proud of my 
leader — the chief I have always clung to through good 
report and ill report — because, wise or unwise as he 
might seem in this or that, he was always noble of 
soul. He was very pleasant to me, and talked of the 
new historic school he hoped we were building up as 
enhsting his warmest sympathy. I wish you could 
have seen with what a glow he spoke of the Montene- 
grins and their struggle for freedom ; how he called on 
us who wrote history to write what we could of that 
long fight for liberty ! And all through the evening 
not a word to recall his greatness amongst us, simple, 
natural, an equal among his equals, listening to every 
one, drawing out every one, with a force and a modesty 
that touched us more than all his power. 

February 22, 1877. 

To-night I am dining at Dean Stanley's — which is a 
joke. I used to go there often, but after my review 
of his Westminster Abbey in the S. R. Lady Augusta 
avenged herself by not dining me, and this is a sort 
of reconciliation dinner, I suppose — though as a 
matter of fact Stanley and I have always been on very 
good terms. If it were not for this I should not go 
out to-night, for I feel a Httle monition of cold, and 
somehow I feel tired still. 

February 23, 1877. 

I see the danger of movement, but I see no chance 
of the possibility of finally standing still ; and as that 



IV LAST YEARS 447 

Is so, I begin to see that there may be a truer wisdom 
in the " humanitarianism " of Gladstone than in the 
purely political views of Disraeli. The sympathies of 
peoples with peoples, the sense of a common human- 
ity between nations, the aspirations of nationalities after 
freedom and independence, are real political forces ; 
and it is just because Gladstone owns them as forces, 
and Disraeli disowns them that the one has been on 
the right side, and the other on the wrong in parallel 
questions such as the upbuilding of Germany or Italy. 
I think it will be so in this upbuilding of the Sclave. 

February 25. — I shall do far better work than 
Little Book before I die ; but there is a fire, an en- 
thusiasm in one's first book that never comes again. 
I felt as if I were some young knight challenging the 
world with my new method, and something of the 
trumpet ring is in passage after passage. But it is full 
of faults, unequal, careless, freakish, with audacity often 
instead of a calm power, only rising when the sub- 
ject caught me, and hurrying over topics I didn't 
fancy. There is a good deal of me in it, but I shall 
have a nobler, a juster, a calmer me to reflect in other 
books. . . . 

To Mrs. Creighton 

Richmond House, Chester, 
March 4, 1877. 

Yes, dear Louise, I am going to be married, but I am 
not going to carry out any foolish statements I have 
made about " absorption " or friend-forgetting. So far 
from it that I was planning with Alice only this morning 
a wild wandering after our marriage in June, which took 
us through Westmoreland Lakes and Scotch Lakes 
round to the Border country, and dropped us for our 
first visit as wedded folk in Embleton Vicarage ! I do 
intend, however, after this and a few other "episodes " 
to find my way over the water, and to move slowly to 
winter. quarters at Rome. 



448 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Your mention of the old days at Peak Hill brings 
them back to me with a strange vividness ! What an 
odd circle it was of men with how different destinies ! 
Well, that memory of the earnest, resolute girl who 
came into the midst of it with her love of knowledge 
and love of right, " young " certainly but not " very 
foolish," because there is no wiser thing in the world 
than the love of those two things, that memory is one 
of the pleasantest of all that time, as it is assuredly one 
of the best. It was a great crisis in my life, Louise, 
though none of you then knew it ; I stood on the 
very brink of a moral wreck ; and if I was saved, per- 
haps the steady right-mindedness of a certain Louise 
von Glehn, moving amidst that sceptical self-indulgent 
circle, with her resolute spirit of love and duty, had 
more to do with it than she knew. . . . — Yours ever, 

J. R. Green. 

To Miss Kate Norgate 

Chester, March 5, 1877. 

... It is only by seeing things ourselves that we 
can make others see them. When criticism has done its 
work comes the office of the imagination, and we dwell 
upon these names till they become real to us, real places, 
real battles, real men and women — and it is only when 
this reality has struck in upon us and we " see " that 
we can so describe, so represent that others see too. 

Let your own instinct guide you in this. There are 
certain figures, certain events, figures like that of Fulk 
the Black for instance, events like the marriage of 
Geoffrey and Maud, that either in their natural 
picturesqueness or their immense results strike the 
imagination at once and raise it to their realisation. 
Take such points as they come home to you, let your 
mind play on them, write when you feel they are real 
and life-like to you, do not be afraid of exaggeration 
or over-rhetoric (that is easily got rid of later on), 
but just strive after realisation and you will write 



IV LAST YEARS 449 

history. The other and dimmer facts will take light 
and form from the portions that have started into life. 
My own advice to you is " Go on." Your work is 
good, and you will do better as you work on. — Yours 
faithfully, J. R. Green. 

To Miss Stopford 

25 CONNAUGHT StREET, 

March 19, 1877. 

This " revision " and " cutting down " is weary 
work ; I long for it to be over, and to feel myself 
free again to find out and tell new things. I don't 
think I could do it, but for the thought I am working 
for you, working to secure you from anxiety about 
income whatever happens to me. 

March 20, 1877. 

Shall you think me " cracked " if I talk again of 
my Primers ? They are so much on my mind that I 
cannot help talking of them. I find by a report I 
drew up for Macmillan that I have brought out nine, 
which are selling about 100,000 copies a year; and 
that I have three more in the press — Miss Yonge's 
France, Dowden's Shakespeare, and Wilkins's Roman 
Antiquities ; and that eight more are promised, includ- 
ing Primers from Professors Nichol, Jebb, Seeley, 
Max Miiller, from Grove, Brooke, Furnivall, and 
J. R. G. I felt a little proud to have organised and 
carried out such a scheme in three years or so ; and to 
have besides projects in my head for at least twenty 
more little books in the same series. When I gave 
up my clerical work I felt a little sad that I should 
find no more sphere for a power of organisation 
which I had discovered in myself while busied with 
the large parishes I had to take in hand ; but life has 
its resources, and in organising a series like this on 
principles "which must influence the whole course of 
schoolbooks, and so of education after I am gone, I 



450 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

don't think I have done much worse than at Stepney 
or Hoxton. 

There is a choice lot of vanity ! I am too proud 
to be vain as a rule, you see, but we must have a 
little flutter, and cock-crow now and then. 



March 24, ^jj. 

... I had a pleasant morning at Roundell's house, 
for he had invited a dozen of our head-mistresses to a 
sort of conference with one or two of the Council, and 
nothing could have been more interesting or instructive. 
I rather grudged giving up my history morning for it, 
but I should have been sorry to miss it. I was struck 
with the practical and governmental sense of the mis- 
tresses ; while on the other hand I saw how needful 
was a general Council such as ours which could look at 
every detail in the broad Hght of its bearing on educa- 
tion itself. . . . 

Remember my theory of life is no mere indolence 
theory. I have worked hard and mean to work hard 
on things which have a worthy end and use. What I 
protest against is mere asceticism, a blindness to what is 
really beautiful and pleasurable in life, a preference for 
the disagreeable as if it were in itself better than the 
agreeable, above all a parting of life into this element 
and that, and a contempt of half the life we have to live 
as if it were something which hindered us from living 
the other half. Mind and soul and body — I would 
have all harmoniously develope together — neither in- 
tellectualism nor spirtualism, nor sensualism, but a 
broad humanity. 

March 26, 1877 (?). 

... I told him of Lord Houghton chatting with 
Louis Philippe after 1 848, and the ex-king telling him 
how when he was a boy his tutor stopped him in the street 
one day, and pointed to a slouching ill-dressed figure 



IV LAST YEARS 451 

who shuffled along clinging to the wall as he went. 
" Some day," said the tutor, " you will be glad to have 
seen Jean Jacques Rousseau." At another time his 
tutoress, Madame de Genlis, took him into a circle of 
princes gathered round a very old man, with strange 
old-fashioned clothes and brilliant eyes. " Ah, you 
here, M. le Due," said the old man with surprise, 
"you among all this Bourbonaille ! " It was Voltaire. 

I had a man at breakfast this morning who would 
have interested you, Norman Moore, one of the surgeons 
at St. Bartholomew's, but a man of marvellous know- 
ledge in all Irish matters old and new. He came to 
talk over the translation of an old Irish manuscript he 
is making ; but gradually our talk turned on modern 
Ireland, and as usual I learned a great deal. Indeed 
he is the only Irish person from whom I ever learned 
anything about Ireland. Most Irish people shake their 
heads and tell me, " Oh, you English can never under- 
stand Ireland," but whenever I question them I never 
find they understand or even try to understand them- 
selves. The Irish Protestants, the gentry, live in 
their own world, and clearly know as little as we 
folk do of the Irish Catholic world without them, 
that is, in effect, of the Irish People. Now Moore 
through his ardent " nationalism," and above all his 
knowledge of Irish and Irish history, cares only for the 
Irish People, and looks upon the Protestants and 
" Englishry," as Swift called them, as mere intruders 
who must at last be got out of the land. He showed 
me in how many ways their extrusion is even now 
going on. For instance I asked him the explanation 
of the diminution of the Protestant population in 
places like Kells. Your mother told me it sank in 
her time from a thousand to two hundred, but her 
reasons for it were not very enlightening. Moore at- 
tributes it to Catholic Emancipation. Before that time 
all trades and industries were practically in the hands 
of town -guilds, and these were Protestant ; hence Prot- 



452 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

estants concentrated themselves in the towns, whose 
commerce lay in their hands. When Catholic dis- 
abihties were repealed and trades and shops were left 
open to Catholics, the Catholic farmers of the county 
round preferred to deal with their own fellow-reli- 
gionists, and so gradually trade has passed out of Prot- 
estant hands, and the Protestants have emigrated to 
America and England. With this change and the 
growth of a Catholic commercial middle class, who 
will spend their savings in land-buying, the land itself 
will gradually pass into purely Irish hands, a process 
which has been going on steadily for the last thirty 
years. It is a curious thing that this process of 
breaking up the Protestant commercial hold on 
Ireland began with the prohibition of the woollen 
manufacture by the English Parliament under William 
III. I want Moore to write the History of this 
silent revolution and displacement of Protestant by 
Catholic Ireland. 



March zj, 1877. 

It was simply one of those sudden breakdowns that 
I fear I must always remain subject to, and which 
show that mischief is there; but it is strange how 
in a single night all strength seems to ebb out of me 
and to leave me next morning helpless and feverish 
on a sofa. . . . 

Yesterday gave me nothing to talk about, for it was 
a mere blank day of weakness and gloom and sofa. . . 
I suppose everybody at Chester is in raptures at Lord 
Derby's "firmness." For myself I am driven to say 
much what I said to a man at the Club the other day 
when he asked a little roughly, " But what are your 
Eastern politics ? " to which I answered, " At present, 
mainly Russian." Another month will clear away this 
mist of negotiations, and at the first shot across the 
Pruth men will rub their eyes and remark whether 
Lord Derby was such a very wise man after all. 



IV LAST YEARS 453 

March 30, 1877. 

Practically it is impossible — without giving serious 
offence to people I care for — to wholly refuse all 
invitations ; but I have accepted few, and have been 
careful whenever I have done so. It is true that my 
work has been hard and extra business rather oppres- 
sive ; but this cannot be helped at times, whatever one 
may wish. You must not picture me as living in a 
round of pleasures ; my common life is very quiet. 
For instance, the " wild revel " I laughed about last 
was only a couple of friends dining with me at my 
rooms in the soberest way. It is true I followed this 
up with one of my " breakdowns," but I fear that 
whatever care one takes these must come at times 
while my chest remains treacherous ... a man gets 
very patient with these Httle ups and downs when he 
can look back, as I look back, for eight long years 
before he sees in the past a day of health. . . . 

It is a curious instance of my elasticity of tempera- 
ment that what has done me most good is really a 
serious trouble which came to me yesterday. I always 
think a real difficulty freshens and braces one up. 
And this is a real difficulty. The Harpers (my pub- 
lishing house in America) have offered me, as I told 
you, a percentage on the sale of the revised edition 
of Short History in both its one-volume and three- 
volume form, and this I accepted, Macmillan arranging 
to forward them the stereotype plates as they are set 
up in the usual way. They have waited patiently, 
but now they write that the revised edition must be 
ready in September — which is their publishing season. 
In a business point of view they have a right to insist 
on this, as my delay has been excessive, and if I refuse 
I fear their offer of a percentage may be withdrawn, 
which would be a serious matter to our income. 
Macmillan too, as the matter is raised, urges that in 
fairness to his own house the new edition should be 
brought. out this year, and this he has a perfect right 



454 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

to urge after waiting so long. But to do this — even 
if it can be done — I should need every day till the 
end of August, for to get the work done by the 15th 
of June is simply impossible. . . . This must be hard 
work, and hurried^ disagreeable work. . . . 

[After discussing the very serious difficulties at this 
moment he goes on.] 

I own to having been annoyed last night by the 
news beyond measure, but this morning I found that 
" dogged does it " had got into my blood, and I 
knuckled to at my work with a resolve to get it done, 
sent a lot off to print at once, and did a lot more 
before luncheon came. . . . Perhaps it is as well we 
should find some difficulties throw themselves in our 
way. Practically too, no doubt, / ought to finish the 
revised edition before marriage, as it is this which 
would be of real value in the settlement I make to 
you.^ 

March 31, 1877. 

My brusque announcement of the all but impossi- 
bility of getting away with this new press of work 
about me may have been too short. It was just 
because the disappointment was so great that I did not 
dwell on it — I felt it must be, and hurried from the 
subject. 

I have just finished a chapter on "Angevin Eng- 
land" which is to begin Book III., and go on after 
tea with "John." But looking over my proofs last 
night I found my hopes had run ahead of facts, and 
that there is a good deal to be done even to these. 
Still it is a very different thing from working entirely 
de novo. I think I am doing well, but I feel more 
dogged than interested in this work. It will be a 
great rehef when it is done, and I shall enjoy my 
holiday ! Do you know I have not taken one for 
three years 1 

1 As will be seen this revision of the Short History in one volume, which he began, 
proved beyond his strength, and had to be abandoned. 



IV LAST YEARS 455 

Jpril I. 

A quiet Easter-day ; rain without, within steady 
work at my revision, which I have brought up this 
morning to Henry II. It is pleasant to feel myself 
going on at last — forced by sheer pressure of printers 
to give up the pleasant Hberty of wandering off into 
new fields of inquiry as they tempt one to left and 
right, and driven to go straight on. As yet I am 
getting along wonderfully on this new system, and 
making a great hole in the work to be done. When 
April ends I shall know pretty fairly what prospect 
really lies before me ; as yet I only see that now that 
I am practically at work I work faster than I had 
feared, and then the work I do is a great improvement 
on my former work. I am not so haunted as I was 
by the fear of " spoiling " my book. I felt that spoil 
or not spoil I had to rewrite it — that was a question 
for my historical conscience — but sometimes the 
dread of a fiasco made obedience to conscience harder 
than one could fancy. 

I am fairly well again, and my nights are sound and 
refreshing, the feverish feeling has passed away. It is 
curious how steady work steadies one's physical system 
as well as one's moral. I feel too already the revival 
that always comes to me with the breath of spring. It 
is such a joy to see the trees all breaking into green 
again — you know my view at the back, well it is 
getting quite gardenish and rural, there is a cherry- 
tree close by me that gladdens me every morning as I 
go out to look at it. Whatever comes to us we will 
never take a house where we can't get some peep or 
other of a tree ! . . . 

I came to-day, among my old papers, on a dirty 
notebook with all my notes of the reading I did for 
a Life of Patrick fifteen years ago. It brought back 
such a flood of memories. I had come to London 
full of hopes and ideals only to see them foiled, and 
myself utterly alone and without a friend in all this 



456 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

Babylon, and then came darkness and misery till I 
roused myself and fled to the British Museum and 
steadied myself by working morning after morning in 
its library at Colgan and Lanigan and all sorts of dull 
folk in the aim of digging up Patrick. After a year's 
work I saw that to do it as it ought to be done I 
should know Irish, so I gave it up, but I had learned 
a good deal, and had got fairly into my historical read- 
ing again, which I had given up in the fit of religious 
enthusiasm which led me to take orders, and from 
that moment I never gave it up again. Putting Ire- 
land aside I bought B^da and the Chronicle^ and for 
the next ten years read steadily at the materials for 
English History. Thence came Little Book. It was 
a strange life, half with Patrick and the great Library, 
half in the wretched purheus of Clerkenwell and S. 
Luke's ; but I felt all through that each half helped 
the other — and so it has turned out. 

April \, 1877. 

I had so counted on the happy days after our mar- 
riage, that when I found myself baffled in this hope 
I felt the old feeling of the disappointment of life 
waking up again, and carrying me back into the old 
gray dead hopelessness which has vanished of late. 
And with this came the physical and mental weariness 
rising out of the new stress of work ; and above all 
of uninteresting work, for I saw that unless I was to 
keep neck and neck with the printers, which would 
be a daily pressure, I must make a great fight these 
early 4ays to get fairly ahead, and this I have done, 
but only at the cost of long grind every day. 

April 5, 1877. 

Things look far brighter to me this morning than 
they looked a day or two ago. That sudden overthrow 
of all my plans hit me harder than I cared to say. I 
braced myself to bear and to work, but I felt it keenly 



IV LAST YEARS 457 

and every nerve shivered and tingled for days. I was 
irritable, for my nights were wretched which always 
brings gloomy days ; and my temper was none the 
better for the hard work. I set myself to do, indeed the 
overwork. However it is over now. Yesterday I 
finished to the end of the chapter on " Foreign Kings," 
and was looking drearily ahead when Miss R. quietly 
fetched down a whole bundle of proofs, proofs set up 
a year ago and which I had wholly forgotten, which 
carried the book on to the battle of Crecy ! Imagine 
my relief, my change of " mood " ! I looked them 
through ; saw there was very little to do to them, that 
they were nearly ready for press, and went straight oflT 
to bed to sleep soundly and rise a fresh creature this 
morning. Things look less blue and I shall go in for 
a lighter heart and a better temper ! 

April d, 1877. 

I did well this morning with my work — I have now 
sent to press up to p. 100 in my present Short History, 
i.e. about a ninth of the new edition ; and if I can get on 
as I am doing now I shall look more hopefully at my 
work and its prospects at the end of April than I do 
at the end of March. After all compulsion has its 
uses ; I strive so after an impossible perfection that I 
should never finish anything if " must " didn't suddenly 
come in this way from some quarter or other. It was 
so with " Shorts " itself I had to huddle up the end 
of it at last and get the book out because Macmijlan's 
patience fairly broke down. This time I will try not 
to " huddle up " anything ; but I daresay something 
will look hurried and imperfect. 

May 5, 1877. 

Imagine my having to figure in a police-court this 
morning ! Last night as I left Stopford Brooke I 
found a cabman lashing his horse brutally, and after 
much trouble in following him found a policeman and 
gave him in charge. So to-day I had to " kiss the 



458 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

book " and give my evidence, and cabby was fined fifty 
shillings or prison for a month. It was worth while wait- 
ing in the Court to see all the seamy side of London 
life, its dull vulgar vice — the bored magistrate : "Was 
he on the drink ? " coming in as a refrain. . . . 

As soon as vol. i. is fairly off my hands I shall 
plunge into the half of vol. ii. which remains to be 
done, so that we may get both out before we go over- 
sea. Macmillan looks blue about my doing this more 
extended work before the revision of " Shorts," and 
says, what is true, that the last would be far more 
profitable to me in a money point of view, and that 
I shall want money now. Well, you and I will know 
how to be poor, if need be. I know that what I am 
doing is the righter thing, and that the " revision " of 
Shorts will be far more thorough and efficient if I 
defer it till my larger work is worked through and 
done. If so doing means not taking a London house 
just yet, we will wait for our London house. 

May 6, 1877. 

[" Hobart Pasha " (Augustus Charles Hobart- 
Hampden, 1 822-1 886), described as an Elizabethan 
buccaneer born in modern England, was an admiral in 
the Turkish service during the war of 1877; and his 
name was for a time struck off the Navy List for com- 
manding against a friendly Power. Freeman, in a letter 
of March 1877, says that he would rather not go to 
Greece "if Hobart should be bombarding or even 
blockading Peiraeus, as the scoundrel may be doing " ; 
but I know nothing more of the challenge. Freeman's 
book was called The Turks in Europe^ 

I mastered my shyness to-day and "vested" myself, 
as the Ritualists say, in your watch chain by way of loy- 
alty to the giver. Some day I shall cajole you into giv- 
ing me a seal ring : indeed all through my life I shall 
be tricking you into a host of little presents, — studs, 
eyeglasses, and all sorts of " bijouteries." I have always 



IV LAST YEARS 459 

set my face against gifts, and with such success that 
nobody has ever given me anything, not even a pair of 
slippers — but now I am like Danae — I want you to 
pour over me in a shower of pretty presents. . . . 

George Howard wants me to speak at to-morrow's 
meeting at St. James's Hall, but I have resolved to 
decline. Liberal folk are much troubled just now. 
Grant-DufF was wild yesterday against Gladstone, " an 
hysterical old woman with the power of words ! " as he 
irreverently called him, and even Lord Aberdare, the 
most good-humoured of men, fairly lost his temper in 
talking to me about the " certain ruin of the Liberal 
party." For my own part I think ruin is just what the 
Liberal party wants ; and if all this row ends in the 
formation of a new Liberal party — even if it numbers 
only eighty members — with Gladstone fairly at its head, 
I shall see light and hope. But I am pretty well alone 
in my hopefulness. Bryce and Lecky mourned to me 
yesterday like sucking doves. 

Freeman has bequeathed to his country as he fled 
from her shores a book on the Ottoman Turks which 
makes a fearful Bulgarian Massacre of my Lord Beacons- 
iield, my Lord Derby, and Hobart Pasha. It is the 
most rattling bit of invective I have read for a good 
while. Did I tell you that an old admiral, a friend of 
Hobart's, challenged Freeman to single combat on the 
sands of Boulogne by way of avenging the Pasha's 
wrongs ? If Hobart resigns his Turkish commission 
and comes home, I shall expect to hear of murder done 
at Somerleaze ! 

May 7, 1877. 

I am working, but even here fate is cross. I had 
my brain all aglow with the thought of "doing" a 
great picture of tenth-century London this morning, 
when in came Macmillan and pressed me with all his 
cool Scotch sense to go on with my " revision " of Shorts 
— the "galley-slave work," as I called it in my wrath. 
He vanished, scared, but wrath settled down after this 



460 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

outburst ; and I just gave a great gulp and put away 
my dear London notes and screwed myself down to 
" revision " and worked at it all the morning. A year 
ago I would have seen " common sense " at Halifax 
before I gave up any project I was hot upon ; but now 
after an indignant growl at Macmillan's talk about 
money I thought, " Well — but for A.'s sake," and 
screwed myself down to " do the disagreeable," So I 
worked for you ; and bit by bit things got brighter 
and the yoke pressed more lightly, and I began to feel 
that duty has its sweetness after all. . . . 

I called at the Howards' yesterday. In came Burne 
Jones, half distraught with the red hangings behind his 
pictures at the New Gallery. He won't go there — " it 
is the last blow," he says, " and it comes from a friend." 
He was very desperate and very amusing; while Mr. 
Howard talked politics and told me the passage at the 
close of Carlyle's letter meant a plan of Lord Beacons- 
field for at once occupying Constantinople ! I am 
afraid we are drifting into war — into war on the side 
of the Devil and in the cause of Hell. It will be so 
terrible to have to wish England beaten. People are 
all shy now of saying in the old-fashioned way that 
they love their country. Well I am not ashamed to 
say it. I love England dearly. But I love her too 
well to wish her triumphant if she fight against human 
right and human freedom. Pitt longed for her defeat 
in America, but it killed him when it came. I can 
understand that double feeling now. . . . 

I shan't go to the meeting, it will be a Babel of row, 
and I fear a mere scrimmage. I shrink from hearing 
a lot of Englishmen clamouring for war, and I fear a 
great lot of such folk will be there, so I shall stay at 
home and work. 

To Miss von Glehn 

May 1877. 
Oh would I were a bird, dear Olga — as birds pos- 
sess (at least in Ireland) the privilege of being in two 



IV LAST YEARS 461 

places at once ! Then would I spend next Saturday 
and Sunday with the Grant-DufFs in Hertfordshire and 
with you at the Peak ! But being a mere featherless 
thing I fear my Hertfordshire engagement stops the 
way. But if the next Friday, Saturday, and Sunday will 
suit you I will break a pledge to the Tootingas and 
spend them with you. Pray let me know. As to my 
constant absence from home, it is simply the insane 
jealousy of the Slave ! She has marked me for her own, 
and suffers no rival to enter my door. The very aged 
and the very hideous are alone permitted to mount my 
stairs. Meanwhile my position becomes hourly more 
difficult. I see the ring is already on her finger ! In- 
conceivable impatience ! If I am to be her own, could 
she not wait till I placed the fatal circlet on her fin — 
Oh, Olga ! may you never know what it is to be wedded 
against your will. Matrimony, once my fondest dream, 
is now my nightmare. Infant slavies sport in fancy 
round my bed — they flourish tiny brooms and dust- 
pans, and call me " Father." I wake from horrid visions 
that She is mine, and I cannot give her a month's warn- 
ing. Pray for me ; and when you come again storm 
my stairs whether she will or no. How I would fly 
into your arms — if it were only proper — and hail you 
as my Deliverer. — Affectionately yours, 

J. R. Green. 
4 Beaumont Street, W. 

Archbishop Tait to J. R. Green 

Lambeth, May ii, 1877. 

[See next letter.] 

My dear Green — I have been very much occu- 
pied ; and this I trust you will accept as an excuse for 
my not sooner acknowledging your resignation of the 
Lambeth librarianship. 

Let me first thank you heartily for the kind expres- 
sions towards myself contained in your note to my 



462 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

son. I rejoice also in reading what you say to him, 
that much of what you feared you had lost in belief is 
again clearer and more real to you. By God's blessing 
I hope and trust that the supports and comforts of 
religion will grow more and more real to you as life 
wears on. You have from health had many trials, but 
God seems to have brought you safely through them 
all ; and I cannot doubt that He intends you for a 
useful and honourable life. May His presence be with 
you in all difficulties of life and of death. 

It would be a great pleasure to me at any time to 
see you. — Yours sincerely, A. C. Cantuar. 

J. R. Green. 

To Miss Stopford 

May 12, 1877. 

I send you a letter of Archbishop Tait in answer to 
a formal resignation of my Lambeth librarianship. I 
sent to him the simple note of resignation, but I ac- 
companied it with a note to his son explaining — as I 
ought to have explained long ago — my long absence 
from Lambeth. I said plainly that my opinions had 
changed to a very great extent, and that I felt I could 
not fairly act as Librarian or visit at Lambeth without 
an explanation which would have been embarrassing 
to the Archbishop, and so while hesitating what to do 
time sHpped away. Now though on some points I 
had begun again to see light where things had been 
dark to me, I still saw no chance of resuming my 
clerical profession, and I therefore begged A. C. T. 
to accept my resignation of what I had undertaken 
as, and still held to be, a clerical office. I think 
nothing could be kinder or more gracious than Tait's 
reply. . . . 

I saw my lawyer to " give instructions " about 
" settlements " yesterday, and left him with the im- 
pression that I was an utter idiot. " I think," he said 
loftily at the close, " I think I had better act entirely 



IV LAST YEARS 463 

on my own judgment." To which, ignoring the sar- 
casm, I replied " Oh, do ! " 

I am going to Knebworth to-day to spend Sunday 
with the Grant-DufFs. I feel I want a breath of fresh 
air, or my temper will grow insufferable. I even 
growled at my Phyllis this morning, and had to apolo- 
gise to that rustic one in deep humiUty. But she 
smiled as though she understood. 

Knebworth Park, Stevenage, 
May 14, 1877. 

At Knebworth we found Chamberlain, the member 
for Birmingham, Lord O'Hagan, and Bywater, a young 
Oxford tutor, very learned and very witty : a pleasant 
party. . . . The place is Lord Lytton's, and in a little 
£shing-lodge beside the ornamental water the " immortal 
Novelist " wrote his immortal works ! Unluckily they 
bore me more than most works, and I feel a spiteful 
satisfaction at seeing that Lytton's building was as 
artificial as his fiction. The house is a mass of costly 
gimcrackery, gimcrack finials and dragons outside, gim- 
crack armour and sham family portraits within. The 
rooms are fine and the whole effect handsome, but 
everywhere one is jarred with the same air of falsetto. 

25 CONNAUGHT StREET, 

May 16, 1877. 

[There was a small, disused church and graveyard 
at the back of the house.] 

... I am making discoveries in the "park" at the 
back of my rooms. Sterne's grave is in one corner, and 
I find that the sight of Tyburn gallows was in the other ! 
The first was put up by the Freemasons, because — as 
they explain in the inscription — Sterne hved by four- 
square-measure, but if so four-square-measure is hardly 
a good measure to mete out life by. The gallows needs 
no freemason to explain its moral. The " Park " is 
really quite pretty now that all the trees are out, and I 



464 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

shall growl when I have to tear myself from it for 
Snowdonia. 

To-day Snowdonia, Italy, Baths of Caracalla, all 
seem dreamlike and vague to me. Only rows with 
printers and stodgy grind at " revision " have any 
reality. 

May 20, 1877. 

I have done less to-day than usual ; a httle work 
this morning, and an afternoon at the Athenaeum over 
the week's papers and over a learned article in the 
Revue Historique on Athens and the Greek Colonies in 
the Black Sea. I came home thinking how a History of 
Hellas ought to be written — it would be a very different 
thing if I ever did it from any Greek History that exists. 

May 23, 1877. 

" Russian sympathies " just now mean sympathies 
with the getting rid of a state of things which keeps 
the world always on the brink of war, and with the 
certain evolution of arrangements more natural and 
therefore likely to be more peaceful. I like to see 
the cynics of the clubs and the hard-headed Whigs 
growling at " sentiment," while "sentiment " is making 
nations. 

May 26, 1877. 

I have just been finishing and giving the last touches 
to the close of vol. i., that is Joan of Arc and the Wars 
of the Roses. It is a mercy to have really got down so 
far. This last part from Richard II. to 1460 has been a 
stiffer job than I counted on. It is so scandalously 
done in my Little Book that I got no help there and 
had to work wholly afresh. I think my greatest gain 
in these last years is a will and capacity to work at 
periods I don't like as much as periods I do. It wasn't 
so when I wrote Little Book, and what with that, and 
what with the wilfulness that came of my wretched 
health at that time, I did such shameful bits of work 



IV LAST YEARS 465 

as the page in which I hurried over Henry the Fourth. 
This was the real fault of the book, its inequality of 
treatment, its fitfulness and waywardness — not the faults 
the Rowleys were down on. 

Sunday, May 27, 1877. 

I do not vex myself as I used with questions that I 
cannot answer. I do not strive to bring my thoughts 
to rule and measure — but new life brings with it new 
hopes, new cravings after belief, new faith that we will 
know what is true. Vague, dim hopes ; vague, dim faith 
it may be — but I am not impatient of vagueness and 
dimness as I used to be. I see now that to know we 
must live, that to know the right we must live the right. 

May 28, 1877. 

[Green was forced by his health to abandon the 
proposed revision of the Short History in one volume. 
The three volumes here mentioned presently expanded 
into the History of the English People in four volumes.] 

To-day I took to Macmillan's my manuscript up to 
Wolsey, so you see I am getting on. I won't try to 
clear your mind wholly as to my plans, but (i) I have 
ceased for the present to go on with the work on Early 
England^ which will come out some day and end with 
the Norman Conquest ; (2) I am now putting through 
the press the three volumes of my revision of the Short 
History in octavo ; and (3) I have made such extensive 
changes, and so wholly altered the plan, etc., and so 
greatly expanded it in parts, that in the bulk of it the 
original Short History does not help me much. 

Athen^um Club, 
May 30, 1877. 

I am chained here. I must get the work I am doing 
finished up to Elizabeth's day in the next fortnight, 
because I can't take abroad the huge calendars I need 
for that period. I always hated people who published 
in Quartos, and now I hate them more than ever. I 



466 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

am very tired and weary too, and my work presses on 
me as it has seldom done, but I go doggedly on. . . . 
The day has been a peculiarly trying one to-day ; I 
rose weary and depressed, and my morning's work 
was diplomatic work, which is very difficult and which 
does not interest me, then I had an afternoon engage- 
ment, and then I worked again for a couple of hours 
till I could not work longer. So as the evening was 
clear and winsome I wandered out into the Park and 
then down here for a cup of cocoa and a quiet read 
of a Lecture of Huxley's on University Teaching, 
and a paper on Florentine Bankers in an old Revue 
des deux Mondes. Voila my recreations. Then Fitz- 
James Stephen came in and we had a long and jolly 
chat about trials and India and what not. 

June I, 1877. 

What did you think of Gladstone's speech ? I 
hope you saw his notice of the " New Historical 
School" and of a certain member of it. It was cer- 
tainly well worth remarking that every conspicuous 
historian in England goes with Gladstone in this 
matter. But I suppose the Pall Mall will say that 
historians know nothing about the present, and V. in 
the Standard will call us " paper-stainers." Just now I 
am more interested in the Western than in the Eastern 
results of this Birmingham movement. It may end not 
only in a reconstruction of the Liberal party, but in a 
new system of political party altogether, with principles 
gathered from the general opinion of all who belong to 
it rather than given from above by the knot of oldish 
gentlemen who sit on the " front bench." 

AthenjEUm Club, June 2, 1877. 

I have just been having an hour's talk with my 
Cardinal, and I must have an hour's talk with you to 
save my Protestantism ! Manning is certainly a charm- 
ing conversationalist, courteous, full of information. 



IV LAST YEARS 467 

with exquisite felicity of expression, and lending him- 
self with perfect ease to every turn of topic — which I 
always take to be the essential difference between con- 
versation and dissertation. We talked of Bryce and 
Colonies and Irish character and Italian scenery and 
EngHsh education and a hundred other matters till 
"his Eminence" had to rise to go. 

My revising yesterday left me headachy and cross 
this morning, and I was glad to get my proofs done 
and go out into the Park. But — second of June 
though Letts assured it to be — I was chilled even in 
my thick greatcoat by the pitiless rain, and driven in 
for shelter to the Club for lunch, to read the week's 
papers, to smile over a letter I found here from Free- 
man, to run over the magazines at tea, and to wade 
through a series of papers on Pitt's finance till I was 
interrupted by my Cardinal. 

25 CONNAUGHT StREET, 

June 3, 1877. 

I am going across the Park to have a chat with 
Stanley and to hear his sermon on Motley's death. 
Stanley, whom I met yesterday, said it was just such a 
death as any one would wish, a stroke of paralysis, and 
then an unconscious fading away in a few hours. He 
is to be buried at Kensal Green, but the Dean has 
offered to have the body brought into the Abbey and 
the first part of the service read over it there. This 
is very graceful and becoming whether they accept it 



or no. 



25 CoNNAUGHT StREET, 

June 4, 1877. 

I have just come from Westminster Abbey, where 
Stanley has been preaching on poor Motley's death. 
Unhappily he was obliged to devote the bulk of his 
sermon to St. Margaret's, Westminster, which Farrar, 
its new rector, is just restoring ; and so what he said 
was short. It was the shorter too that he had to make 
an eulogy of General Grant, who turned up at the 



468 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

service : an awkward matter, for Grant and Motley 
were personal foes. I should have liked Stanley to 
have pointed out the thing which strikes me most in 
Motley, that alone of all men past and present he knit 
together not only America and England, but that Older 
England which we left on Frisian shores, and which 
grew into the United Netherlands. A child of America, 
the historian of Holland, he made England his adopted 
country, and in England his body rests. 

However, what the Dean said was generous and 
noble, and the phrase — " an historian at once so ardent 
and so laborious " — struck me as most happy. He 
asked me to go into the Deanery, to introduce me — as 
I found — to General Grant, who shook hands and said, 
" Mr, Green," in a dry voice, and said no more ! You 
know the story of Moltke and the young subaltern who 
found himself put by error into the same compartment 
with the Field Marshal. " Pardon, sir," said the sub- 
altern when he entered, and " Pardon, sir ! " when the 
train stopped and he could at last retire. " What an 
insufferable prater ! " said Moltke. I think Grant 
seems to almost rival the man who " can be silent in 
eleven languages." By-the-bye, Stanley talked of his 
" laying down the sceptre," which I thought hardly a 
Republican phrase, but Lord O'Hagan to whom I 
repeated it said, " He must have laid down something ; 
he had no crown to lay down, and he certainly wouldn't 
lay down his pipe ! " 

Grant is a short, square, bourgeois-looking man, 
rather like a shy but honest draper. Still he could 
take a look of dignity when one was " presented," and 
I didn't forget that he had been a ruler of men. 

... I have written to L. that I cannot let these 
rooms in August or September. My work is so 
behind-hand after all my grind that we must come 
back here after a little holiday at the end of July, and 
devote ourselves for a couple of months to getting on 
with my book. 



IV LAST YEARS 469 

June \, 1877. 

To-night it is very still, the air is soft and warm. I 
have been standing out in the " balcony " looking over 
my death-garden, with its great, shadowy tree masses 
breaking the square house hnes around. 

June 5. 

. . . But these owls always get between one's soul and 
the sun — as if sunshine was something dangerous. Ah 
me, I fear I shall always be more Hellenic than Christian 
— but life, life in all its energy and brightness and quick 
.movement, life in all its quick interchange of laughter 
and tears, why do these men fear it so and preach it 
down .? They preach it down ! They go their way and 
the sun shines on, and the world laughs for freedom 
and for joy ! 

I have had Professor B. here to breakfast — a pleasant 
fellow with pleasant children, of whose questions and 
answers he talked much by way of showing how " First 
Books " should be written. I listened and learned ; 
but the more I theorise about what my Primer of 
English History should be, the less clearly do I see 
how it is ever to be done. " Just sit down," says the 
dear Macmillan, " and you will write a good book 
which will sell." No doubt — but I want to write 
something more than " a good book which will 
sell." 1 

To-day I have been up to my knees in proofs, 
my " row " with the printers having brought me an 
avalanche. I have had my " cold fit " about the new 
book on me of late, but the sense that it will be a 
failure lightens a little as it gets into type; and I own 
I brightened a little over the pages of William the 
Conqueror's character to-day. But what ups and 
downs of hope and despondency you will have to 
bear ! 

1 The Primer was begun and the first slips printed, but it was never continued. 



470 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

To Miss Kate Norgate 

Bettws-y-Coed, 

June 1 8, 1877. 

. . . Your divisions seem to me quite right and 
clear. By all means keep to them. But remember 
all the while that divisions are simply helps to greater 
clearness of treatment — that they do not exist, at least 
with definite edges, in nature itself — and that all the 
while you write you must try to hold your story as one 
story, and to carry it across division after division as a 
continuous whole. 

Then again try to vary your point of view as you pass 
from one division to another. For instance, in the early 
part it is impossible to get any biographical hold of the 
men. See whether you can make up for this by finding 
some other "centre" of interest, for instance, by taking 
Anjou itself as the basis of your story, describing it as 
well as you can, picturing its towns or castles or rivers, 
as you can find about them, and so on. Of course, all 
this would be merely tentative ; you could only describe 
the country thoroughly when you have seen it ; but in 
the effort to get at its appearance from books and maps, 
or at the look of the towns or churches from any 
collection of pictures or illustrated books, you would 
prepare yourself to ^r^yf/ by the actual sight of it all — 
you would clear your mind as to the things you spe- 
cially wanted to see. 

Then, clearly, with Fulk the Black you passed to the 
biographical mode of treatment. Seize your man. Try 
to picture him to yourself in all his fierce greed and 
activity and ruthlessness and craft. Help yourself by 
using the legends about him — telling them as legends, 
disproving their historical accuracy, if it be needful, but 
gathering from them the conception of character which 
after days formed of him, and using them as colour for 
your picture. 

Then again, with the " conquest of Touraine " make 



IV LAST YEARS 471 

Tours your centre, take its history from early days by 
way of digression, tell a story or two about St. Martin 
(look through his life by Sulpitius Severus, if you like), 
or about the quarrels over his rehcs, or Count Fulk the 
Good sitting as canon in the choir, and so on. Then 
its capture will become a living thing to your reader ; 
he will see what importance the town had in those days, 
and so what new importance its possession gave its 
Angevin counts. 

Remember, these are simply hints to help you, for 
you will have to work in your own way, as we all have ; 
I only tell you in what way I should probably work 
out this part of history because it may furnish incident- 
ally some hints for your own treatment of it. — I am 
faithfully yours, J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

Hotel de Lille, Paris, 
January 22, 1878. 

My work is over, dear Freeman, and now for a wild 
shriek of liberty ! In other words I have sent vol. ii. 
to press and buried Elizabeth, and have now time and 
thought to bestow on my friends. Most of the new 
volume is new ; and the reign of Elizabeth newer than 
the rest. Even Shakespeare had to be practically re- 
written before I could satisfy a keen critic, yclept my 
wife. I bore in mind throughout your judgment on 
" Shorts " that the sixteenth century was the weakest 
part of it and wanted rethinking and rewriting ; and I 
have done my best to rethink and rewrite it. Now 
that I look back on " Shorts " and its treatment of the 
Reformation period, I quite agree with your condemna- 
tion. Still it needed courage to set aside work which 
the bulk of readers liked most of all ; so I hope you 
will praise me for my loyalty to truth, whether I have 
muddled my book or no. The volume will be out in 
February. I don't mean to think about English history 
or England more than I can help for a whole month. 



472 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

My head is a good servant, but I have been a hard 
master to it of late, and it needs a holiday. My holiday 
has opened pleasantly enough. . . . 

My last news of you was a cheery letter to Mac- 
millan after you reached Salerno. I hope your health 
is better with the new air and new rest. Were I you, 
I would simply rest and leave Turks and Froudes to go 
the way of Turks and Froudes. . . . Were I a man for 
notes and controversies I have somewhat to say anent 
Anthony and Tudor facts and fictions. But I grudge 
spending moments on Anthony which may be spent on 
better things. Life is so short and history is so long ; 
and there be volumes three yet to write, and so much 
to say in them — so I let the Anthonies go their way to 
their own place. . . . 

Before leaving London I set Maine a-moving to see 
whether Dizzy could be moved to kick Bright upstairs 
into the Divinity chair, Stubbs upstairs into the Ecc. 
History chair, and leave the Regius for you. Unluckily 
he has most influence with Salisbury, and SaHsbury little 
with Dizzy just now. Moreover, Dizzy loveth neither 
Ritualists nor Anti-Turks. Still the said Dizzy has 
noble points ! He reads and gives away " Shorts." 
It is delightful to think of W. Gladstone and he being 
bound in one by that interesting little work ! . . , 

Messieurs les Grecs have been a shade too clever ! 
" Insurrections in Thessaly," " movements over the 
border," come a trifle after the fair. Still with all their 
faults I look on the Greeks as the political nucleus round 
which the other Eastern Christians must gather; and I 
wish they could have Constantinople. Oh, if that grand 
Immobility at the Foreign Office would move in that 
direction, then would Israel not rejoice and Judah would 
be right sorry; but we should see some settlement of 
the Eastern question. As it is, if Greece is left out in 
the cold it only means a new Eastern question from 
Thessaly instead of Bulgaria. — Ever aflfectionately yours, 

J. R. Green. 



IV LAST YEARS 473 

To E. A. Freeman 

Hotel Quisisana, Capri, 
February 17, 1878. 

My dear Freeman — ... And I was happy, too, 
to hear that you are getting really better and stronger. 
My one way of getting right is that of sitting still ; and 
in spite of Hellenic temptations at Agrigentum and 
elsewhere I hope you will sit all the stiller when you 
feel a bit stronger than you do now. It is just when 
people "feel better" that they generally set to and 
throw away all the good they have gained. For me, I 
got a good deal shaken by my midwinter journey ; and 
now I am at rest I feel as if no mosaics or tombs of 
Fredericks could set me a-travelling again. Capri is 
just about big enough to interest me. My mind won't 
run beyond some three or four miles either way ; and 
I feel quite comfortable to know that the cliff and my 
range of interest coincide. I can't meet people at the 
tomb of the Emperor Frederick ; but I can meet them 
in the palace of Emperor Tiberius ; and we can look 
one way at a Roman camp and another way at a medi- 
aeval castle and up at a hermitage in the clouds and 
down at the sea and across at the snow-rimmed Apen- 
nines. What I like best here is the homeliness of 
our life. The Capri doctor looks in and prescribes 
for my cold, but waives aside my five francs with a 
pretty speech about the pleasure he has gained from 
my conversation. The hotel-keeper sternly refuses to 
charge any " extras," even if we dine in our own room 
and give infinite trouble. The head waiter sends to 
Naples for a magnificent bouquet of camellias, and 
presents it to my wife, saying: " Mr. Green came here 
before unmarried ; now he comes married ; it is right 
you should have a regale " (marriage gift). 

It is odd how I have drifted away from English 
history in a month ! I can hardly believe that thirty 
days ago my head was full of Philip of Spain and the 



474 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

two Cecils. Now I care for nothing but strolls in the 
morning and climbs in the afternoon and hunts after 
the best violet-beds and the early narcissus bunches. 
I am in fact getting brighter and stronger in this pure 
light mountain and sea air, and above all in this perfect 
rest — so much brighter and stronger that I am think- 
ing of buying a house here to tempt me to spend every 
winter at Capri. It will be charming to sit literally 
under one's own vine and one's own fig-tree. 

Rome seems topsy-turvy by the deaths of Pope and 
King — imagine the Pantheon blocked up by a " Kata- 
falk," with four colossal ladies in plaster at the corners 
which were Rome, Florence, Milan, and Naples till Pio 
Nono declared not a mass should be said there so long 
as they bore those names, on which ingenious Italy 
turned them into the four Cardinal Virtues. And people 
fancy it will be turned topsy-turvy by the coming of a 
new Pope — so I shall stop here till these Papal tyrannies 
be overpast and peace come again to the Scarlet Woman, 
which I take it will be about the middle of March. — 
Affectionately yours, J. R. Green. 

To E. A. Freeman 

50 Welbeck Street, W., 
September 30, 1878. 

My dear Freeman — I am exceedingly glad that 
you can see your way to doing the Primer. It need in 
no wise clash with your continuation of Old E. H. As 
to the plan I quite go with you in all else; but instead 
of the centra] portion, that is to say the bulk of the 
book, being " Edward, Harold, WiUiam," would it not 
be well to make the Conquest itself the central point 
in the middle of the Primer, and done in greater relief 
than the rest, and to treat Edward and Harold as pref- 
atory, and William's own reign, and parcelling out of 
England, legal, etc., changes, and the like, as conse- 
quential ? In other words to carry out on the small 
the original plan of your big Norm. Conq. which I 



IV LAST YEARS 475 

have always mourned over, as so greatly superior in 
point of art to the present one ; I mean your three- 
volume scheme in which the central vol. is the Con- 
quest, and the vols, before and after its prelude and 
results. Putting it in the practical way I like myself 
in these wee books, this would give, I. General 
Introduction, Normandy and England, and their 
affairs up to ^Ethelbert, say pp. 1-13 ; 

II. Thence to Harold's crowning or so, pp. 13-46, 
thirty-three pages ; 

III. The Conquest 1066-1071 or so, thirty-three 
more, pp. 46—79 ; 

IV. The Norman Kings to Tenchebrai or so, includ- 
ing Will's confiscations, settlements, etc., thirty-three 
more, 79-1 12 ; 

V. Epilogue on general results, 1 12-126, fourteen 
pages. 

Will you consider this ? What I think we should 
aim at in these smaller books is to produce in a boy's 
mind one definite impression ; and he can only get this 
by having some one central event brought strongly out, 
much more strongly than we older and more " feelo- 
sofical " folk need it, and all other matters grouped 
round it. Besides, though it's I that say it who 
shouldn't, boys like fighting, and it's through war and 
the picturesqueness of war that we can best get them 
to follow out and understand the historical and larger 
aspects of things. The only difference, in fact, between 
this plan and yours is the bringing out on a larger 
and more prominent scale of the central fight for 
England, and this, I fancy, will suit you as well as 
it suits the boys. 

You see I have learnt somewhat since I writ "Shorts " 
with its fling against "drum and trumpet" history. 
But I still hold that battles are milk for babes, and 
that if you could interest a boy in history by banging 
the big drum, you ought to be able to carry on his 
interest in it when he groweth to be a man by more 
peaceful and less noisy instruments. 



476 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

We are engaged for Wednesday, and I fear shall 
hardly be able to catch the love-birds on their flight 
through town, but we will try. 

I see, to some extent, your feeling about the 
Professorship ; and quite agree with you that you 
could not, nor is it in any wise needful that you 
should, "put yourself ^^^^r/y forward." You have of 
course passed out of the stage of " testimonials," etc., 
save in giving them to others. But it would equally 
of course be needful that you should offer yourself 
as a candidate by sending in your name to the 
electors, and this, as I gather, you are ready ta 
do. They could not as a public body offer the post 
to you without some such indication of your wilHng- 
ness to accept it and discharge its duties. I will 
send that part of your letter on to Maine, and hear 
what he suggests next. Nothing, I take it, can be 
formally done till he resigns the chair at the end of 
the year. But I will write and tell you. 

I fear — as things go — that should Stubbs go to- 
this chair your chance of the " Regius " would be 
small. Brewer or some far worse man would get it.. 
I own I don't think so much of Brewer since I read 
that last volume of preface of his. His short work 
is better than his long work ; and his theological bias 
is so pronounced and so perverse as to shake all con- 
fidence in his way of looking at things. Neither do 
I think Gardiner improves as he goes on. He is 
evidently afraid of not looking at things as Ranke 
looks at them. Now Ranke looks fairly enough, /or 
one who is not an Englishman, and has done good in 
bringing out the foreign and foreign-policy side of 
things ; but for one who is an Englishman and who 
sees from his own very boyhood things in a light in 
which Ranke could not see them, the Ranke point of 
view is a very inadequate and miserable one. Then 
too the painting Laud as a champion of religious 
liberty of thought is almost equal to any paradox of 
Froude. — Yours ever affectionately, J. R. Green. 



IV LAST YEARS 477 

P.S. — •/ am ready for the Primer whenever you 
can do it. 

To E. A. Freeman 

50 Welbeck Street, 

November zo, 1878. 

My dear Freeman — ... I am dehghted to hear 
you are so well — and that you won't be torn away from 
Somerleaze. The foul weather does me no harm ; but 
it is foul weather and I long for a sight of the sun. 
Haply you are luckier in that matter down in the West 
country. I have done my little " Historical Readers," 
which gave me just ten times the amount of trouble I 
expected, and also finished the reign of King Jamie — 
whom, having now studied all that Gardiner and Ranke 
can say for him and read a good bit of the things they 
refer me to, I think worse of than ever. For this no 
doubt I shall be properly " put down," but in spite of 
all the Gairdners and " RoUsmen " I shall go on loving 
freedom and the men who won it for us to the end of 
the chapter. In an offshoot of the Times yesterday I 
saw some remarks of Bismarck on " despatches " and 
" State papers," which the Ranke school might weigh 
to their great profit. He looks on such materials as of 
very little value. "What," he asks, "would all the cur- 
rent despatches tell of my real policy or that of Glad- 
stone or Thiers ? " Surely they tell even less of national 
feeling, of those impulses which (and not the policy of 
statesmen) really — with my Lord Beaconsfield's and 
Ranke's good leave — make history. However I am 
out of fashion in all this, and as the dear Appleton 
says, " an unscientific writer ! " I shan't do much to 
the Great RebeUion, and thence all is printed to about 
1700, so that vol. iii. will soon be ready; vol. iv. will 
be a different matter, but I shall be glad to get to 
utterly new work which it will give me, as " Shorts " 
has nothing for that later time and I am left free. 

Good-bye. — Ever yours affectionately, 

J. R. Green. 



478 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

To E. A. Freeman 

Hotel Quisisana, Capri, 
• February 28, 1880. 

... My wife has just gone through your Norman 
Conquest and is now deep in Stubbs, having taken 
Lingard's Anglo-Saxon Church by the way. She is help- 
ing me amazingly in the work I have now set about — 
a book on our own history up to your Norman Conquest^ 
not of course on your scale, but in modest form. Dear 
old Stubbs, when I spoke to him of it, said that there 
was nothing new to be said, and that folk would not 
read of things before 1066, and perhaps he is right. 
But I should like to try to make them, before bowing 
to this doom. As a matter of fact much of our early 
history is even in point of incident more interesting 
than many after periods, and though no reviewer save 
you noticed that part of " Shorts," yet I think most 
readers liked it as well as any. But what I shall aim at 
is, not to do much in the directly " political events " 
way, but rather to bring out what I can of the actual life 
of early England by the help of laws, etc. ; and in spite 
of Stubbs I find much that has not been told as yet. 
However I mean to be modest, and I shall fight hard 
to keep it down to a single volume. I am at work now 
on the " Conquest," which I hope to tell at some length 
— but I doubt more and more the Chronicle chronology, 
though the order of the Conquests in the Chronicle, so 
far as it goes, is clearly right. The true key, I think, 
lies in what Kemble pointed out long ago, the number 
of names of settlement in each district as a test of 
priority ; adding to it the relative size of their hundreds 
and (with more caution) the patronymic names among 
the settlements. On the actual dates I find Skene's 
arguments very hard to meet. As to the Conquest 
itself I am using Geography a good deal as a guide, and 
I find some of the results very interesting. For instance, 
I had grounds for thinking that there was little contact 
between the folk who conquered the Lincoln country 



IV LAST YEARS 479 

and those who conquered Southern Yorkshire. I 
thought this odd till I put in on my map the great 
Axholme tract on the lower Trent, and saw how all but 
impossible such contact then was. 

Of course I am sorely tried by the lack of books, 
though 1 sent out a huge box. But still the quiet and 
sunshine of the place are great helps to work and 
especially to the " thinking " side of work : and as Rome 
and Naples are still chilly I don't think I shall leave 
this warm little nook for a while. All I am resolved 
on is to get about a month at Rome and to be in 
England by the ist of May. There is a "four hun- 
dredth " anniversary of my old Magdalen school later 
on in May, whither they want me to go ; and perhaps 
I may go and look at the old place again after these five- 
and-twenty years. 

You were very hard (Jan. 29) on " the fools and 
chatterers of London " for doubting whether the " Lib- 
eral reaction " was a fact. Well, a month has gone by, 
and perhaps you would hardly be so hard on the " fools 
and chatterers " now. I see no more ground indeed for 
the depression of Liberals to-day than for their exulta- 
tion a month ago. I believe that public opinion is still 
wavering, that there is no general love of the govern- 
ment, but on the contrary there is a steady distaste for 
its new plans and its big schemes ; but that there is no 
more love for the opposition, and as steady a distrust 
of the attitude of a Liberal ministry in the coming 
overturning of Europe. Just now I fancy John Bull's 
real feeling is " a plague o' both your houses." But as 
to the coming elections — if things stand as they are — 
I fancy the Home-rulers will win some Conservative 
seats in Ireland, the Liberals a few Tory seats in Scot- 
land, and the Tories perhaps a Liberal seat or two in 
England, and that is all. However, one great mistake 
or failure on Dizzy's part would swing feeling round 
with a vengeance, and such a blunder may well come 
any day. 

Here, as elsewhere on the Continent, all other 



48o LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

political questions are dwarfed by the dread of a coming 
war. Italy believes she holds the key of the situation, 
that without her the combination of France, Russia, 
and Turkey is hopeless, that with her these powers will 
smash up the two German states, and so she haggles 
for her price with both sides. I think she will get it, 
and then — Good-bye. — Ever affectionately yours, 

J. R. Green. 

To Humphry Ward 

Hotel Quirinale, Rome, 
Aprils, 1880. 

. . . Whether Gladstone takes office or no let us 
never forget that the triumph is his. He and he only 
among the Liberals I met or heard of never despaired. 
He and he only foresaw what the verdict on this " great 
trial " would be. When folk talk of " cool-headed 
statesmen " and " sentimental rhetoricians " again I 
shall always call to mind that in taking stock of English 
opinion at this crisis the " sentimental rhetorician " was 
right and the cool-headed statesmen were wrong. It is 
just as with political sentiment itself. The Tories hate 
it, and the Whigs scorn it ; and yet the great force 
which has transformed Europe, which has been the 
secret of its history ever since 1815, is a political 
" sentiment " — that of Nationahty. 

The really notable thing about the elections is the 
political " cleavage " they denote. It will be an ill day 
when, as in France, our political lines of division coincide 
with our social and religious lines. Yet that is what 
this election points to. Liberalism is becoming more 
and more coincident with Nonconformity ; it is becom- 
ing less and less common among men of the higher 
social class. The bulk of the nobles and the gentry, 
almost all the parsons, the bulk of the lawyers, I fear 
an increasing number of doctors, are all Conservative. 
I see that Liberals have an intellectual work to do as 
well as a directly political. I mean that they must 
convert the- upper classes as well as organise the lower. 



IV LAST YEARS 481 

And this perhaps may force on us soon a higher and a 
more intelligent Liberalism than we have now. Any- 
how, we are back in days of reality and not of impostors, 
and we shall see Englishmen interested in things they 
do know, in home questions, and not pretending to be 
wild about things they don't know ; and those are 
foreign questions. For the last few years I have always 
stopped the mouths of Jingoes by taking them at once 
into the geography of Central Asia ' 



J, R. Green. 



To E. A. Freeman 



Hotel de la Ville de Lyon, Fontainebleau, 
May 8, 1882. 

[Villele was the reactionary minister of Charles X. 
from 1825 to 1827. Freeman was on a Commission 
of Inquiry into the Ecclesiastical Courts.] 

I cannot set foot in England, dear Freeman, without 
a word of gratitude for your review. What you say 
of the close of the book is quite true. I have been 
trying to remedy its defects by drawing up a long 
picture of the development political and social of the 
country from Eadwine to Offa's day, which may serve 
as the close of the volume in a new edition, or which I 
may use to begin another volume if I write one. But 
that, in spite of Macmillan's announcements, is still a 
big " If." The truth is the subject tempts me less and 
less the more I work at it. The more I study the two 
centuries before Ecgberht, the more I can see the old 
free constitution crushed out by the political consolida- 
tion, the old Folk-moot dying with the folk themselves 
into local shire and shire-moot ; and by the extinction 
of the old iEtheling class and the upgrowth of the big 
kingdoms transformed into a small royal council. After 
Ecgberht things only grew worse ; and closer study of 
the law and administrative acts convinces me that the 
conquest was continuous from Hengest to William, 



482 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN part 

that in spite of all the West-Saxon brag the Danelagh 
remained virtually independent even from iElfred to 
Edward's day, that the successes of those " glorious " 
and " unconquered " gentlemen only went on so long 
as the Northern peoples were busy at home, and that 
when the kingdoms there were really formed Sweyn 
could take up the work of conquest just where it had 
stopped at the Frith of Wedmore, and finish the job 
with the Danelagh to back him. As I read it the 
story isn't a pretty one, and the people are not pretty 
people to write about. 

However you will say this only proves that I am 
still a poor weak body, apt to take " blue " views of 
things past or present. And no doubt this is in some- 
wise true. Mentone and its glorious winter has done 
me good in more than one way, but I am still weak in 
body, unable to walk much, tired with a little sitting 
up or a good talk, and I fear there is small radical 
improvement in the state of my lung which is the root 
of all the evil. There is nothing for it but patience 
and good humour ; but it is sometimes hard to feel 
one's brain as active as ever and yet doomed to inaction 
from being chained to this " body of death," as Paul 
called it long ago. What has cheered me most under 
it has been the reception of the " Making." - I don't 
mean its sale and the praise of it, but the cessation at 
last of that attempt, which has been so steadily carried 
on for the last ten years, to drum me out of the world 
of historical scholars and set me among the "picturesque 
compilers." It cost me many a bitter hour, but I 
suppose it is over now. . . . 

I can hardly write of other matters for thinking of 
the terrible news of this morning — the murders of Lord 
Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke. The first I 
have met and talked to more than once ; and his quiet, 
kindly nature makes the thought of such a doom yet 
more horrible. What is worse, I fear the murderers 
will succeed in their real end, — that England will be 
panic-struck and call for " strong measures " and most 



IV LAST YEARS 483 

probably a new ministry. Still I have a lingering hope 
that people may keep their heads, and ask who did 
the deed and why ? . . . Our course (hard as it is) 
is plain — to hold to the new policy in spite of this 
murder, or rather all the more in consequence of it. . . . 
But in the presence of popular passion statesmanship 
is helpless ; and I fear Gladstone will fall as Chateau- 
briand said Villele fell — // a glisse dans le sang. 

Good-bye, dear Freeman. I hope your work on 
Church Rags will bring you soon to London, and let 
me see you. Till then, with kindest regards from my 
wife — secretary, librarian, translator, — I am affec- 
tionately yours, J. R. Green. 

To Humphry Ward 
[Probably his last letter. About January 15, 1883.] 

I need not tell you, dear Humphry, what your 
warm-hearted letter was to me. It came at a moment 
of extreme depression, and did me more good than all 
the doctors. Whatever my unruly tongue may say or 
do, my love for those I love never falters, and I Hve in 
their love for me. 

I am better and stronger, but progress is so slow 
and broken that I can't feel much of the betterness. 
It worries me above all that I have so little vigour for 
the reconstruction of my book, which I have resolved 
on and begun ; helped much by some good historical 
talks with Bryce and Lord Acton. Creighton's is a 
remarkable book, both in its learning and its vigour 
of execution ; but it would have been better had he 
written in his own person and not in the person of old 
Ranke. "A poor thing, sir, but my own," is true of 
literature above all. Still the book shows great power, 
and sets Creighton among real historians. 

Love to dear M. and the children. — Affectionately 
yours, J. R. Green. 



APPENDIX 



THE LIFE EVERLASTING 

A Sermon preached on Sunday, July 13, 1862, in the 
Church of St. Barnabas, King's Square, London, 
by the Rev. J. R. Green, M.A., in memory of 
Jane, wife of the Rev. Henry Ward, M.A., 
incumbent, obiit July 2, 1862, aged forty-two 
years. 

A PRAYER 

Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits of them that de- 
part hence in the Lord, and with whom the souls of the faithful 
after they are delivered from the burden of the flesh are in joy and 
felicity ; we give Thee hearty thanks that it hath pleased Thee to 
deliver this our sister out of the miseries of this sinful world, be- 
seeching Thee that it may please Thee of Thy gracious goodness 
shortly to accomplish the number of Thine elect and to hasten Thy 
kingdom, that we with all those that are departed in the true faith 
of Thy holy name may have our perfect consummation and bliss, 
both in body and soul, in Thy eternal and everlasting glory ; through 
Jesus Christ our Lord. 

•*We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we 
love the brethren." — i John iii. 14. 

Eight years ago the bravest of England's sons marched 
past their Queen to the war. " To how many," — the 
question came sadly back when the shouts of the people 
were hushed, and the joyous music had died away, — 
** to how many had that royal hand waved a last fare- 
well ? " Day after day a mightier host rolls past the 
Christian preacher to a surer doom ; no question rises 

485 



486 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN 

as they pass, careless and grave, beauty, and wit, and 
fame, the unknown, the sordid, the commonplace, old 
and young, foe and friend ; to each, to all, the preacher 
bids farewell ; he too descends to march with them, and 
joins their solemn progress to the grave. 

It is the grave that parts the one from the other the 
two hosts that march mingled in that vast company ; 
Death himself is the judge who severs the world's army 
from the army of God. The one has ended its course ; 
this earthly life, bounded by the cradle and the tomb, is 
its all, and death is the end of it ; the other sees in 
these few chequered years but a fragment of existence, 
of a Being that looks back for its fount to a love before 
time began, and forward for its future to a life that shall 
endure when time and the things of time shall pass away. 

To the first it is not I that speak to-day, it is a 
greater than I. One night in the year, says the Breton 
peasant, the inhabitants of the countless tombs that strew 
the field of Carnac rise from their graves and flit in 
ghostly troops across the plain, to the little chapel from 
whose pulpit Death in the garb of a preacher preaches 
his sermon to the dead. Listen, ye dead of to-day ; 
hsten, ye to whom this world is all ; listen to the 
preacher Death. From this grave which we contem- 
plate he points to the life which it ends ; look where 
you will, it is not life but death ; look where you may, 
man, traversing as his all that space between the cradle 
and the tomb, " walketh in a vain shadow, and dis- 
quieteth himself in vain." Everywhere is the incom- 
pleteness of Death. The secrets of the wisest die with 
the brain that wove them; the hopes of the noblest 
sleep with the heart that conceived them ; the riches of 
the meanest drop from the hand that gathered them. 
All is limited, broken, fragmentary ; a little earth parts 
us from the friend that we loved, ere we had tasted but 
the first sweetness of friendship ; and the home that we 
gather around us breaks into vacant seats and memories 
which linger in closets of the heart that we dare not 
open. Life, that ends in Death, is but one long disen- 



APPENDIX 487 

chantment, a riddle without meaning, a maze without a 
plan, where sitting amid the ruins of aim, and hope, and 
love, in the kingdom of Death, man reads graven on 
every monument of his rule, the sermon of that terrible 
preacher, " Vanity of Vanities ! all is Vanity ! " 

Triumph, O Grave, over the world, and the world's 
children ! but where is thy victory over the children of 
God ? He who but a few months since stood knocking 
at the gate of kings, knocks now at our own. Enter, 
O Death, take that is thine, the still, passionless face, the 
cold, motionless form. But she whom it enshrined is 
the charge of a stronger than thou ; she hath passed 
from Death unto life ; she is not here, she is risen. 
.For if indeed to the dead in sins, the death of the body 
is the seal and sacrament of the death of the soul, to 
them that have risen with Christ, it is but the perfect- 
ing of their resurrection, but the last victory over the 
sin that yet clung to and harassed its conqueror. And 
so it is that for the redeemed while yet on earth, the 
contemplation of Death passes evermore into a solemn 
longing for the life that it sets free. For Death is to 
them but the angel at whose touch the world's subtle 
veil is rent to reveal an eternity of which this earthly 
life is but a fragment, the Heavens open, and lo ! Christ 
sitting at the right hand of God ; for them too Death is 
a preacher to tell how, in that eternity, a love incom- 
prehensible created and chose for eternal bliss the soul 
that it had made; a love patient with the rebel, seeking 
after the lost, winning back the estranged ; a love to 
reveal which to man the only begotten leaves the Throne 
of His Father, conquers in dying the death of sin, and 
in rising again gives man the life eternal. The Hfe that 
He gives is His own ; the soul that has groped its way 
to the foot of the Cross becomes one with Him that 
hangeth thereon ; He dwells in the redeemed ; of His 
fulness they receive ; He gives them the spirit of adop- 
tion and shares with them His Sonship ; He prays 
but that the love wherewith the Father loves Him may 
be in them, that they may be one in His unity with 



488 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN 

the Father, heirs with Him of the Divine kingdom, 
partakers of the Divine Nature. 

The life then of the Christian becomes but the life 
of Christ; the problems of a narrower existence vanish 
with the shadow of its hopes and fears ; old things have 
passed away, and a new life, eternal as the Lord from 
whom it springs ; a life, in the light of whose eternity 
we see this passing life to be but death, fills the heart of 
the Christian. It is a life hid from the world's blind 
scrutiny, with Christ in God. There in ever-deepening 
communion with the love that passeth understanding, 
struggling and suffering in the sufferings of its Lord, 
bearing His Cross, enduring oftentimes His shame, 
entering through Cross and shame more and more into 
the mind of its Christ ; there beneath the everlasting 
wings, and in the realised presence of God, the soul of 
the redeemed marches in the strength of his grace from 
victory to victory over the sin that yet clings to it, rises 
daily with Christ to nobler self-conquest and a higher 
life, and waits patiently for the death of the body to 
enter into the perfect liberty of the children of God. 
Nor is it only in this onward progress, these longings 
after God, that Christ is the life of the Christian soul. 
The life that rises evermore with Him in His love of 
God, falls evermore back with Him to earth in His love 
of man. Our very affections for one another, the nat- 
ural ties that link brother to brother, friend to friend, 
become deepened, widened, transfigured, in the glory of 
His love, " as I have loved you, so do ye also love one 
another." Nay, more ; to these sanctified affections He 
has given His own especial office, they become judges 
of the soul ; " he that loveth not his brother abideth in 
death ; " " we know that we have passed from death 
unto life because we love the brethren." 

It is from the memory of such a double life as this, 
a life so quickened, so hallowed, so hid in God, that I 
would draw to-day some faint consolation for the bitter 
grief of a bereaved husband, the tears of a desolated 
home. Sad privilege of Death, that for the first time 



I 



APPENDIX 489 

reveals to us the greatness that is gone ! We move 
among the pleasant fields, and catch broken ghmpses 
of beauty down glade and avenue, but not till we pause 
on the hill-top for a last gaze on the scene that we are 
quitting for ever, does it burst on us in its complete- 
ness, in its harmony. And yet, when I would recall 
*' the tender grace of a day that is dead " it is this very 
unity and completeness that baffles me. Little by 
little harmonious characters break upon us in memories 
of patience and love, of consolation and encourage- 
ment ; but the moment we would grasp them we fall 
back perplexed before that inexplicable contrast of a 
serene and holy calm with quick sensibilities, where as 
we search emotions seem ever more delicate and peace 
more deep. And here, if anywhere, were fused in an 
admirable unity quaHties and gifts the most various 
and opposed. Around an intellect singularly broad 
and massive, flickered the gentler lights of a taste 
subtle, fastidious, and refined; the imagination that 
soared without an effort to the noblest spheres of 
genius or inspiration, or played with a graceful flexi- 
bility over the pathetic and the fanciful, co-existed with 
a love of order, a natural faculty for organisation, a 
mind eminently practical. So, too, a quick and acute 
apprehension, a rare versatility and aptitude for the 
appreciation of new ideas, a singular freshness and 
vigour of thought that loved to catch even from a 
distance a glimpse of the march of knowledge, or to 
investigate the social and religious problems of the 
hour, submitted in her to the sway of a quiet common 
sense, of a judgment passionless and calm. For hers 
was a mind of no common order, a rare nature, and a 
rarer grace. Little indeed was revealed to the outer 
world save a temper serene and self-contained, a simple 
unaffected courtesy, a wise and steady will ; over all, 
like the silver haze of dawn, brooded the reserve of a 
gentle melancholy, broken indeed by gleams of child- 
like playfulness, a sunny humour that ever ranged within 
the bounds of reverence and love, the natural blitheness 



490 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN 

of a heart chastened but not darkened by the sad 
discipline of her Ufe. It was a joyousness that never 
failed to meet the glad influences of external nature ; 
there, like the Patriarchs of old, she loved to commune 
with her God ; through field and copse she moved as 
in her Father's home, and lulled her cares with the 
sweet songs that from every tree discoursed to her of 
her Father's love.^ For beneath the serene calm of the 
outer surface lay a heart on which cares bore heavily, a 
heart sensitive to misunderstanding and wrong, living 
in the very Hfe of those she loved, rejoicing in their 
joy, grieving in their grief. Hers was a matchless 
tenderness, yet it was the tenderness not of a weak 
nature but of a strong ; a tenderness that blended with 
quick decision, great force of will, unflinching steadi- 
ness of purpose, a noble courage, a noble endurance. 
Nobleness was the characteristic of her life, the noble- 
ness of high longings, of a sublime reaching forward to 
all that was lofty and true, an instinctive scorn for all 
that was base and mean, a quiet indifference to the 
pettiness of the world's common converse, a resolute 
aversion for the trivial gossip that eats away truthful- 
ness and charity. 

It was the nobleness of one who lived as in the very 
presence of God, whose being was but one deep com- 
munion with the Invisible. Who but the Spirit of 
God knows the depths of the souls of his own ? The 
world sneers or wonders at its own fancies and ideals, 
not at the real lives that God keepeth in His Taber- 
nacle from the strife of tongues. Even earthly affection 
can but stand afar off and guess from broken gleams 
and stray flashes at the glory of the light within, yet 
none but felt that in this reahsation of God's presence 
lay the secret of her faith, a faith so simple, so com- 
plete, that some viewing it from a distance deemed 

1 " It is marvellous the joy I feel simply from the exhilarating influence of nature 
around me. The simplest wild flowers suggest happy thoughts of the Invisible Hand 
which clothed them with their grace and loveliness, and the birds with their warbling 
melodies and blithe free movements discourse to me of God the Father and lull many 
an anxious care." — (From a Letter to a Friend.) 



APPENDIX 491 

it fatalism. But fatalism is the mere blind submission 
to an irresistible power, and hers was a surrender with- 
out reserve, a frank self-abandonment to a wisdom 
which she knew was love. With that wisdom she 
communed in meditation and prayer, its voice was her 
supreme law. She was " a wonderful Bible reader " ; 
no memories recall her more vividly than those that 
group themselves round her favourite portions of Holy 
Writ, the Psalms and the Gospel of St. John. So 
resting upon God she marched heavenward with a 
step unfaltering and sublime. But the light that 
revealed her strength revealed also her weakness, it 
was a light not of faith only but of the humihty in 
which faith must have its root. She learnt the lesson 
of lowliness in the school of the Cross. Early to her 
came the bidding that comes soon or late to all, " take 
up thy Cross, and follow me." Pressed even in child- 
hood with the anxieties of riper years ; at the first 
blush of womanhood a wife and mother ; bereavement 
leaving graves here and there along her path, and yet 
hardly lightening the oppressive burthen of her cares,^ — 
such a life drank deep of the bitterness of the Cross, and 
it drank deeply of its consolations. Beneath its load she 
learnt to know the depth and tenderness of the love that 
laid it on her ; " touched in its tenderest part, troubled 
in its sweetest and purest affections, that soul, unable 
to support itself, escapes from its weakness and goes to 
God ; " the words of her death-bed unfold the mystery 
of her life. " O, the love of God ! what a large-hearted 
love is the love of God, to suffer me to love Him so." 
The soul that thus soared with its Lord to the love 
of heaven fell with Him to earth to become the 
servant of all. A natural expansiveness of heart, an 
innate capacity for affection, was glorified and trans- 
figured into the charity that is of God. She moved 

1 She had lost five children ; four were taken in comparative infancy, — and for 
them her tears were dried and her heart was comforted. But her eldest and most 
treasured child reached seventeen years before she was taken away ; and this was 
the cloud which more or less shrouded the six remaining years of the mother's life. 
— H. W.. 



492 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN 

among her fellows, calm, noble, serene ; but her noble- 
ness blended with a tenderness for all around her, 
worthy of the Friend of the Magdalene. She weighed 
their embarrassments, their temptations, she drew from 
her own failings extenuation of their faults ; with a 
noble humiHty she even exaggerated her own weakness 
to palliate their infirmity. Her victories were victories 
of patience ; petulance and provocation fell abashed 
before the sweet charity of her silence. Something of 
that large-heartedness which she adored in God, God 
had bestowed upon her ; room was found in that 
large warm heart for all, from the friend of her closest 
converse to the poor women, so lately gathered round 
her,^ who hung tearfully on the varying rumours which 
reached them from that bed of death. But wide as 
was her affection it centred in her home. Home is 
the world of woman, nor need she sigh like the victor 
of old for other worlds to conquer. Souls, destined 
for immortality, gather round the table and the hearth 
at a time when souls are most impressible for good 
or ill, and she to whom each instinctively clings has 
among them her Apostleship. Nor is that all ; our 
social needs gather another circle round this inner one, 
to take from it its character and impression. Still, 
peaceful, deep-hearted, speaking little, bearing much, 
loving more, she whom we mourn laboured among 
both in the very spirit of an Apostle. The tears of 
her domestics fell not so much for the mistress, con- 
siderate and gentle even when most firm, as for the 
wisest of guides, the truest and most patient of friends. 
Nor has the husband whom she has left, only to learn 
in the absence of a thousand little attentions, too un- 
obtrusive to be noted till lost, the care and assiduity 
of her affection ; days of loneliness must recall the 
calm and judicious counsellor, the noble-hearted part- 
ner of his cares, the great and simple soul that in the 

^ In her " Mothers' Meetings," held once a fortnight for the poor married women 
of the parish, some of whom long since declared that they looked forward to that even- 
ing as the happiest of their existence, and that as soon as one meeting was over they 
counted the days to the next. 



APPENDIX 493 

daily ministrations of his life was ever raising, ever 
supporting, ever lifting him heavenward. But you, 
children of her love, in whose young hearts must live 
for ever the tearful memories of the days that are 
gone ; you, cradled in her tears and in her prayers, 
environed evermore by a tenderness too unselfish for 
weakness, gather up, while they are still fresh in your 
ears, those golden words, those lessons of wisdom, of 
piety, of benevolence, of true greatness, which fell from 
that rich one's table ; gather up those hourly proofs 
of an unwearied love, of patience, of unselfishness, 
which ever illustrated the lessons which she taught. 
For she lured you towards heaven by going before ; 
she tempted you to the love of piety by showing it 
lovely in herself; she led you through daily instances 
of her own self-sacrifice upward to the self-sacrifice 
of her Lord. 

Meet and right it is to bow before the inscrutable 
wisdom that has interrupted thus a work ended with 
none of her children, with most hardly begun. Young 
and old, they rest alike beneath the Fatherhood of 
God ; and faith brings the little children to their Lord 
that, as of old, He may take them up in His arms, 
lay His hands upon them, and bless ^ them. Faith 
echoes for us the words that comforted the mother of 
Augustine, — " the children of so many tears cannot 
be lost." 

Faith such as this was hers who now drinks of the 
fulness of that love to which she trusted all. Death 
came as no strange visitant to one who stood on the 
very verge of Time looking out into eternity. Vainly 
we linger by the grave of our blind desires, that in the 
after-time love might render back some recompense for 
love, that 

All the train of bounteous hours. 

Might lead by paths of growing powers 

To reverence, and the silver hair. 

Vainly we linger by that grave which is but the scene 
of her latest triumph, where the life that cannot die 



494 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN 

laid aside for ever the last vestiges of mortality. Freed 
from the sensual fetters that clogged its heavenly 
aspirations, the soul sprang thence to the fulness of 
the life in Christ, to a growth and development in 
harmony with the Divine laws whose sway had hitherto 
been partial and interrupted. The stream, that while 
a rivulet, chafed and bent before a thousand obstacles, 
now deepened to a mighty flood, sweeps silently to the 
sea. A course never ceasing, — a deepening and wid- 
ening that never ends ! The cry of the Church trium- 
phant is the cry of the Church militant, " lift us up 
for ever." Never perfect, the soul is ever being 
perfected ; never God, it is ever drawing nearer to the 
Divine nature ; never exhausting the love of Christ, it 
is ever knowing more of it, ever discovering in it fresh 
depths and heights. It is a constant growth, a vivid 
activity ; no passive rest like the heaven of the 
Moslem, but an activity which is rest, because perfect 
love hath cast out fear whether of receding to the 
past, or of failure in the future. Fear and sorrow have 
no place in the eternal joy. She who hath risen, who 
riseth evermore, to higher knowledge and higher love, 
and nobler praise, hath " obtained joy and gladness, 
and sorrow and sighing have fled away." The Cross 
has become the Crown ; and for the tears and prayers 
of her earthly pilgrimage her voice springs evermore 
from the sabbath of her rest to mingle with the music 
of golden harps, and the praise that, like the noise of 
mighty waters, rolls evermore around the throne of the 
Lamb. 

And we, why stand we thus gazing up into heaven ? 
life grants but a short respite for sorrow; even now 
it calls us hence. By memories that can never die, 
the dead in Christ still surround us with ministries of 
the love that seems to have passed away. Those 
spirit hands that reach from forth the veil of the 
Holiest hft up the hands that grasp them, and the 
heart that still throbs at their touch. Our loves, our 
friendships here have a tinge of earthly passion, of 



APPENDIX 495 

selfishness, that sullies their nobleness. But no touch 
of self or passion mingles with our love for the dead. 
Cherish the love of the dead. Welcome the com- 
panionship of the dead. We, who hushed the ignoble 
word upon our lips from reverence for the nobleness 
beside us, — will not that reverence for eyes which now 
read our hearts quench the ignoble thought that rises 
there ? Henceforth we live in the communion and 
fellowship of the Saints. They are beside us, they 
are among us — those holy ones whom we mourn — to 
comfort, to lift us up for ever to the heaven in which 
they dwell. Turn then to the life that this presence 
hallows, O bereaved children ! O desolate spouse ! 
Prayer shall rise for you from lips unworthy as ours, 
that upon you may descend the consolations of Him 
*' who comforteth us in all our afflictions," — prayer for 
you, and for ourselves also, that in our hearts may 
abide that divine peacefulness, that lowliness, that un- 
selfishness, which in her threw a glory over the com- 
monest details of her daily life ; above all, that we 
too may drink of that Divine charity that leaves us 
now mourners, but mourners of a hope that cannot 
fail, for " we know that she hath passed from Death 
unto Life, because she loved the brethren." 



THE WORKS OF J. R. GREEN 

Oxford during the Last Century. Being Two Series of 
Papers published in the "Oxford Chronicle and Berks and Bucks 
Gazette" during the year 1859. Oxford, Slatter and Rose, 1859. 
4to. 

The First Series is not by Green. The Second Series occupies 

PP- 35-/31- 

Reprinted with other papers as Oxford Studies. 1859. 

Issued as a Publication of the Oxford Historical Society, and also 
by Macmillan and Company in the ** Eversley Series." 1901. 

^*^ All the later works were published by Messrs. Macmillan and Company. 

I. A Short History of the English People. Pp. xl. 847, 
5 maps. Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d. 

First edition printed in 1874; reprinted January (twice), 
March, July with corrections, November with corrections 1875 ; 
1876 with corrections; April, November 1877; March, August 
1878; 1880 with slight corrections; 1881 with considerable 
corrections; 1882, 1884, 1885, with corrections; 1886 with 
corrections. 

Second Edition, Revised, printed in 1887; reprinted 1889, 1891, 
1894, 1895, 1899. 

An Edition with Tables and an Analysis, by C. W. A. Tait, in 
four parts. Crown 8vo. Parts I., II., and III., 1889 ; Part IV., 
1890. 

Illustrated Edition. Edited by Mrs. J. R. Green and Miss 
Kate Norgate. 

First published in 40 is. monthly parts, commencing September 
1891 ; afterwards in 4 vols. 48s. per set, December 1894; and 
in 3 vols. 40s. per set. 1898. 

II. History of the English People. 8vo. i6s. 

Vol. I. printed 1877; reprinted 1877, 1881, 1885, 1890. 

Vol. II. printed 1878; reprinted 1808 with slight corrections; 

1885, 1900, 

Vol. III. printed 1879; reprinted 1882, 1886, 1891, 

Vol. IV. printed 1880; reprinted 1883 with slight corrections; 

1886, 1893. 

2K 497 



498 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN 

An Edition in eight volumes. Globe 8vo. 5s. each. (Eversley 
Series.) Printed 1895-96. 

III. The Making of England. 

First Edition 8vo. Pp. xxviii. 448, and 1 map, January 1882; 
Second Edition, December 1882 ; Third Edition, 1885 ; Fourth 
Edition. 2 vols. Globe 8vo. (Eversley Series), 1897 ; reprinted 
in 1900. 

IV. The Conquest of England. With Portrait and Maps. 
First Edition 8vo. Pp. xxxvi. 636, 1883 ; Second Edition 8vo., 

1884 ; Third Edition. 2 vols. Globe 8vo. (Eversley Series.) 
Printed in 1899. 

V. Stray Studies from England and Italy. 

First Edition. Extra Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d. Printed 1876. 
Second Edition. Globe 8vo. 5s. (Eversley Series.) Printed 
1892. 

VI. Readings from English History. Selected and edited by 
John Richard Green. In Three Parts. Globe 8vo. Each Part 
IS. 6d. 

Part I. From Hengist to Cressy, Printed in 1879; reprinted 
1880, 1883, 1888, 1889 (tvi'ice), 1898. 

Part II. From Cressy to Cromwell. Printed in 1879 5 reprinted 
1880, 1884, 1888, 1891 (twice), 1893, 1895. 

Part III. From Cromwell to Balaklava. Printed in 1879; 
reprinted 1880 (three times), 1884, 1887, 1891, 1895, 1896. 

A special School Board Edition, price is. each part, printed in 
1881. 

VII. A Short Geography of the British Islands. By John 
Richard Green, M.A., LL.D., and Ahce Stopford Green. With 
Maps. Fcap. 8vo. Pp. xx. 416. 3s. 6d. 

First Edition printed in 1879; reprinted 1880, 1884, 1888, 
1893, 1896 (with many alterations). 

VIII. Essays of Joseph Addison. Chosen and Edited by John 
Richard Green. Post 8vo. Pp. xxviii. 377, 4s. 6d. Printed in 
1880 ; reprinted 1882, 1885, 1 890, 1892 (2s. 6d. net), 1893, 1897, 
1898, 1899 (twice). 



SOME AMERICAN EDITIONS 

A Short History of the English People. 
^ First Edition in i volume. Published by Harpers. ;^l.20. 
1874-1888. 

1 See p. 386. 



THE WORKS OF J. R. GREEN 499 

Edition in 5 vols. izmo. Published by American Publishing 
Company. $2.j^. 

Edition in 4 vols. i2mo. Published by Allison. ^2.50. 

Edition in 2 vols. i6mo. Pubhshed by Amer. Bk. Ex. ^1,00. 
1881. 

Edition in i vol. i6mo. Published by Useful Knowledge. 
$0.37. 1882. 

Edition in 4 parts 410. Published by Munro. ;^o.20 each. 
1880-81. 

Edition in 5 vols. i2mo. Pubhshed by Hurst. ^5.00. 1889. 

Edition in 4 vols. Pubhshed by Lovells. ;^5.oo. 

Edition in 4 vols. (?) Pubhshed by Colher. ? 

An Edition in two volumes. Published by Appleton in the 
"Hundred Best Books." 1899. 

[Th,ese represent the first text of the SJhort History, which 
appeared before the Copyright Act. It should be noted that 
Messrs. Appleton, in their edition of 1899, followed the well-known 
tradition of their house in assuming the obligations which copyright 
would have imposed, and forwarded the first cheque received from 
America for the original text of the Short History.'^ 

A Short History of the English People. 
Revised Edition in i volume. Pubhshed by Harpers. ^1.20. 
1888. 

Illustrated Edition in 4 volumes. Published by Harpers, 

1894 and 1895. 

History of the English People. In 4 volumes 8vo. 
Published by Harpers. ;gio.oo. 1878-80. 

TRANSLATIONS 

(1) Breve Storia del Popolo Inglese. Translated by Sofia 
.Fortini-Santarelli. i vol. Florence 1884. 8vo. 

(2) Histoire Moderne du Peuple Anglais depuis la Revolution 
juiSQu' A Nos JOURS. Translated by Miss Mary Hunt. With in- 
troduction by M. Yves Guyot. i vol. Paris 1885. 8vo. 

(3) Histoire du Peuple Anglais, Traduite par Auguste Monod, 
et precedee d'une introduction par Gabriel Monod. 2 vols. Paris 
1888. 8vo. 

(4) Geschichte des Englischen Volkes. Translated from the 
Revised Edition of 1888 by E. Kirchner. With preface by Alfred 
Stern. BerUn 1889. 2 vols. 8vo. 

(5) John Richard Green, History of the English People. 2 
vols. Translated into Russian by P. Nikolaer. Moscow 1891—92. 



500 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN 

(6) A Chinese Translation was planned by W. Huberty James, 
and is being carried out under his supervision by a Chinese, Mr. 
Chao, a scholar of Nanking. The first volume was completed in 
1898. "This must be magnificent in English," the Chinese 
writer is reported to have said. "1 shall try to make it as good in 
Chinese." 

ARTICLES IN MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE 

October 1869. Abbot and Town: an unpublished chapter of 
English History. 

November, December 1869, January 1870. Lambeth and the 
Archbishops. 

September 187 1. Edward Denison — In Memoriam. 

October, November 1871. The Early History of Oxford. 

(These were reprinted in "Stray Studies.") 

ARTICLES IN THE SATURDAT REVIEW 



1867 

Stubbs's Inaugural Lec- 
ture . . . Mar. 2 

Watch and Ward at Ox- 
ford ... 9 

Roman Wall 

Tombs at Fontevraud 

Essays on Reform . 

Freeman's Norman Con- 



13 



quest 

Freeman's Norman Con 
quest 

The Curate's Progress 

English Municipal His 
tory (Leicester) 

Bishop of Durham and 
his Rural Dean . 

Whalley " de Profundis ' 

Chateau Gaillard . 

A French Professor 

Three English Statesmen 

Pym, Cromwell, Pitt Aug. 10 

Education in Early Eng- 
land (Furnivall's pam- 
phlet) . . . 17 

Cry of the Curates . 24 



23 

30 

April 6 



27 
July 6 

13 

20 
20 

27 
27 



1867 
British Association at 

Dundee . . Sept. 14. 

Ecclesiastical Commis- 
sions . . . 14 
Donkey-racing . .Oct. 26 
Guizot's Barante . Nov. 16 
English Municipalities . 23 
Ffoulkes' Christendom's 

Divisions . . . 23 

Science and the Clergy . 30 

Palestine Exploration 

Fund ... 30 

Russell's Resolutions on 

Education . . 30 

Platonic Women . Dec. 28 

Pauperism in East London 2 8 

1868 
Man and his Master . Jan. 4 
East End Relief Com- 
mittees . . . II 
Woman in Orders . . 18 
Educational Reform . 18 
Monuments of West- 
minster Abbey . . 18 
Woman and her Critics . 25 



THE WORKS OF J. R. GREEN 501 





1868 


Soupers at the East End 


Jan. 25 


Education Question 


Feb. I 


William Blake (Swin- 




burne) 
^Esthetic Women . 


I 
8 


Mr. Gladstone on Ecce 




Homo 


8 


The Begging Parson 
Gladstone and the Session 


15 
15 


Papal Women 
Government and Educa- 


22 


tion 


29 


Oxford Protest 


Mar. 7 


Priesthood of Women 


7 


Bruce' s Education Bill . 


21 


Future of Woman . 


28 



Government and Educa- 
tion ... 28 
Woman and the World April 1 1 
National Documents of 

Scotland (Rolls) . i8 

Pearson's England . . 30 

The Fading Florence . July 18 
Kingsley's Hermits . 18 

New Epitaph of Milton . 25 

Chronicles of Picts and 

Scots (Rolls) . . 25 

Pretty Preachers . . Aug. i 

Buttercups . . . 15 

Freeman's Norman Con- 
quest, Vol. 11. . . 15 
Freeman's Norman Con- 
quest, Vol. II. . . 22 
Freeman's Norman Con- 
quest, Vol. II. . . 29 
Man and his Disenchanter 22 
Home of our Angevin Kings Sept. 5 
Ghost of the Season . 19 
The Literary Goat of 

Cardiff ... 26 

Wayside Thoughts (Edu- 
cation) ... 26 
Old Girls . . . Oct. 3 
Benedictus Abbas . . 3 
Historic Study in France 17 
France and French Poor 

Relief . . . 24 



1868 
Sir Walter Raleigh Oct. 3 i 

Conversion of England . Dec. 5 
Semi-detached Wives . 1 2 

Helps' "Columbus" . 19 

1869 
Young France under Dis- 
cipline . . . Jan. 2 
Milman's Annals of S. 

Paul's ... 2 

Benevolence and the Poor 23 

Pierre de Langtoft Feb. 13 

Thwaite's Folly (Thames 

Embankment) . . 20 

Longman's Edward III. 20 

<< " . 27 

Gildas . . April 24 

" . . . . May 8 

Young Oxford . . i 

Chaucer's England . 29 

Municipal History of 

London . . June 19 

Moberly's Basda . . July 3 

St. Edmundsbury . . 31 

Annals of Osney and 

Wykes . . . Aug. 7 

Helps' Pizarro . • 14 

First English "Murray" 
(Howell's Foreign 
Travel) . . .21 

Baring-Gould's Curiosi- 
ties of Olden Times . 21 
Packing Up . . . 28 
University Reform . Sept. 4 
First Love . . . 18 
Hotels in the Clouds Nov. 13 
Freeman's Children's His- 
tory of England . 20 
Troyes . . . 27 
Venice and Torcello Dec. 1 1 
Cobbe's Norman Kings . 18 
1870 
London of the Plantage- 

nets (Riley) . . Jan. i 

Morleyism (Dissent and 

Liberalism) . . 8 

Hughes' Alfred the Great Apl. 30 
Wallington's Diary . May 7 



502 



LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN 





1870 




1872 


Ebbsfleet . 


May 14 


Peep at Spirits 


Vlay 1 1 


Pretty Women 


June 4 


Russian Life 


II 


Lions and Lion-hunters . 


II 


Umbrellas . 


18 


Oxford as it is 


18 


Jones' Conquest of Britain 


18 


English Town Gilds 




Italy at Work 


25 


(Brentano) 


25 


Very far West indeed 


25 


Falling in Love 


July 2 


Seeing the Academy 


June I 


The Parson's Vigil 


23 


Creasy' s Colonial Institu- 




Freeman' s Cathedral of 




tions 


I 


Wells . . Aug. 13 


Planning Holidays 


8 


The Doctor's Waiting 




Hermann Agha 


8 


Room 


Sept. 17 


Poetry of Wealth . 


15 


The House of Brienne . 


24 


Great Yarmouth . 


15 


Village Politics in France 


Oct. I 


The National School- 




Rochester . 


8 


master 


22 


Cowper 


Nov. 5 


Margaret, Duchess of 






1871 


Newcastle 


22 


Winter Flittings . 


Feb. 4 


Children by the Sea Aug. 3 i 


San Remo . 


1 1 


A Century of Bibles 


Oct. 5 


Italy and Italian Life 


18 




1873 


District Fisitor 


Mar. 4 


Capri . .. . Mar. 22 


The Sermon-tub . 


18 


Freeman's European His- 




Carnival along the Cornice 


25 


tory 


22 


Dino Campagni 


April I 


Italy and her Education 




England under the Palms 


8 


Bill 


29 


Como 


15 


Capri and its Roman Re- 




Angers 


May 1 3 


mains 


April 5 


Virgir s jEneis 


June 10 


Coral Fishes of Capri 


May 3 


" Dido 


24 


Italy and Ancient Art 


24 


Evenings at Home 


Oct. 7 


Priesthood in South 






1872 


Italy 


June 7 


Freeman's Norman Con- 




The Chronicles of Anjou 


Julys 


quest, Vol. IV. 


Feb. 3 


Tristram's Land of 




Freeman's Norman Con- 




Moab 


Aug. 23 


quest, Vol. IV. 


10 


School History of Eng- 




The Voluntary Choir April 20 


land 


Nov. I 


English Loyalty 


27 


Pilgrimage of the Tiber . 


8 


Jackson's Diaries . 


27 


Art at Home 


Dec. 20 


Post Cards . 


May 4 


Pike's History of Crime 




Freeman's English Con- 




in England 


Jan. 10 


stitution . 


■ 4 







The titles of the articles collected in ' 
printed in italics. 



Stray Studies" are 



THE WORKS OF J. R. GREEN 503 

Green read papers upon "Dunstan at Glastonbury," and upon 
••Earl Harold and Bishop Giso," before the Somerset Archaeological 
Society in 1862 and 1863 ; these papers were printed in the Society's 
Proceedings, vol. xi. p. 122, and vol. xii, p. 148. A paper upon 
the Ban of Kenilworth, communicated to the Historical Section of the 
annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and 
Ireland, at Warwick, July 1864, was printed in the Archaological 
Journal, vol. xxi. p. 277 ; and a paper upon " London and her 
Election of Stephen," read at the London Congress of the Archaeo- 
logical Institute in 1866, was published with the other papers read at 
the Congress, in "Old London," 1867. 



INDEX 



Aberdare, Lord, 459 

a Court, Mrs., 414; letters to {see 

under Letters) 
Acton, Lord, 483 
America, success of Green's books in, 

387* 395 

Anjou, 212 

Arnold, Mary {^see Ward, Mrs. Hum- 
phry) 

Arnold, Matthew, 395 

Arnold, Thomas, 81 

Avignon, 398 

Ayrton, Mr., 201, 205 

Babington, Mrs. Churchill, letter to, 

278 

Baird, Rev. , 49 

Bale, 214 

"Ban of Kenilworth," 149, 150, 152 

Baring, Charles, " Bishop of Durham 

and his Rural Dean," 185, 187 
Barlow, Mr. and Mrs., 170 
Battle of Hastings, 224-226 
Beales, Mr., 201, 203, 204, 205 
*' Beating the Bounds " at Oxford, 47 
" Bishop of Durham and his Rural 

Dean," 185, 187 
Bismarck, 263, 273, 477 
Bordighera, 293 
Boscastle, 189 
Boulogne, 400 
Boyce, Mrs., 294 
Boyle, Mr., 191 
Brewer, Dr., 476 

British Association, 41, 43, 86, 188 
Brooke, Stopford, Green's friendship 

with, 70, 174, 210, 240, 328, 397; 

" My Daughters on the Beach," 207; 

interest in the People's Magazine, 

190; contributions to " Primers," 

218, 449; Eastern Question, 391 
Browne, Rawdon, 236 



Bruce, Lady Augusta {see Stanley, 

Lady A.) 
Brunton, Sir Thomas Lauder, 394, 400, 

402 
Bryce, James, Green's friendship with, 

397, 401 ; reminiscences of Green, 

213,216; essays by, 63, 184; speech 

re E. A, Freeman, 251, 253, 254; 

Historical Review %chtTae, 172, 433; 

criticism of Short History, 385; 

Eastern Question, 441 
Burke, T. H., murder of, 482 
Burt, Mr., 150 
Bywater, Mr., 463 

Cairo, 398 

Camden, Mr., 146 

Cannes, 297 

Capes, 368 

Capri, 212, 217, 340-345, 347, 351, 

394, 395» 473 
Capuchins in Italy, 267 
Carnarvon, Lord, 395 
Castle, Mrs., Green's aunt, 2 
Cavendish, Lord Frederick, murder 

of, 392, 482 
Ceriana, 280 

Chamberlain, Joseph, 463 
"Chateau-Gaillard," 186, 187 
Cheel, Charles, grave of, 138 
Cholera panic, devotion of Green, 

55 

Church, Dean, 318 

Church, the, choirs, 39, 94 

Church Liberal Association, 132 
Creeds, Green's views on, 164 
Disestablishment, 378 
Freedom of thought, 139, 292 
Legal continuity and the Reforma- 
tion, 360-362 
Ministry, 109; value of degrees, i68 
Progress of Christianity, 1 18-120 



50s 



5o6 



LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN 



Clark, Sir Andrew, Green's medical 
adviser, 55, 209, 238, 281, 316, 356, 

398 
Clark, G. W., 237 
Clough, A. H., 107 
Colenso, Bishop, 154 
Coleridge, Sir John, 368 
Colvin, Sidney, 321 
Conquest of England, 401, 478 
Cook, John Douglas, 65, 177, 185, 189 
Coope, Mr;, 201, 205 
Cox, Rev. Sir George William, 154 
Coxhead, Mr., 83, 112 
Cranborne, Lady, 185 
Creeds, Green's view« on, 164 
Creighton, Bishop, 68, 218, 483 
Creighton, Mrs., marriage of, 68; 

letters to {^see under Letters) 
Cromwell, 376 

Curates at Stepney described, 163 
Curates' Clerical Club, 162 
Customs duties in early English history, 

157 

Daubeney, Mr., 73 

Dawkins, Professor W. Boyd, Green's 
friendship with, 14, 22, 76; letters 
to (^see under Letters) 

Denison, Edward, Green's friendship 
with, 56, 191 ; elected M.P. for 
Newark, 205 ; Green's paper on, 
306; letters to (^see under Letters) 

Deutsch, Emmanuel, 68, 290 

Dicey, Mr., 424 

Dickenson, Mr., 143, 174, 252 

Disraeli, 447 

Dixon, Hepworth, 194, 228-230 

Dobbs, A. E., 82, 90 

Dowden, Professor, 218, 449 

Drayson, Captain, 89 

Druid, the, 61, lOI 

Du Chaillu, Paul, 85, 87 

Duff, Sir Mountstuart Grant, 395,428, 

459. 463 
Dupaty, Baron, 379 

Earle, Professor, 380 
Eastern Question (^see Politics) 
Eastern Question Association, 390 
Edinburgh, degree of LL.D. conferred 

on Green, 394 
Education, national, 171 



Egypt, journey to, 398 

Elections, Green's comments on, 195 

Ellis, A. J., 403 

" English," when the word was first 

used, 431-433 
Evans, Mr., 422 

Falconer, Dr., 42, 109 

Farrar, Canon, 467 

Ferguson, Mr,, 77 

Fire in London described, 83 

Fishing party described, 26 

Flogging at school, 6, 10 

Florence, 212, 307, 322, 326, 328, 394, 

395 

Forster, W. E., 392 

Fowle, Rev. , 130 

France and Franco-German War, 257, 
259-266, 273, 283, 288, 298, 325 

Freeman, E. A., Green's friendship 
with, 10, 62, 98, 397; reminiscences 
of Green, 214; tour abroad with 
Green, 212, 307-309; D.C.L. degree 
conferred upon, 253; re "Hobart 
Pasha," 458; letters to (^see under 
Letters) 

Freemantle, Rev. W. H., Ill 

Frogs at Cannes, 297 

Froude, Anthony, 239, 242, 273, 315 

Furnivall, Frederick James, 449 

Gairdner. James, 407, 477 

Gardiner, S. Rawson, 411, 425, 476, 

477 
Garibaldi, Green's visit to, 414 
Gell, Rev. Philip, 51, 54, 135 
Gell, Philip Lyttleton, reminiscences 

of Green, 54 
Genoa, 272 

" Geography of the British Isles," 395 
Geology, 22, 41, 42-44, 74, 82, 126 
Germany, Green's visit to, 212 
" Gildas," 232 

Giles, Rev. John Allen, 144, 145 
Gladstone, 218, 257, 409, 441, 447, 

459. 480 
Glehn, Mr. von, 68 

Glehn, Louise von {^see Creighton, Mrs.) 
Glehn, Olga von (^see under Letters) 
Goldwin, Mr., 184 

Goschen, George J., 220, 297, 299, 395 
Grant, General, 467 



INDEX 



507 



Green, Adelaide (sister), 2 
Green, Annie (sister), 2 
Green, John (uncle), 2 
Green, John Richard — 

Childhood, i; school life, 2-13; 
college Hfe, 13-20; degrees taken, 
13, 14; location of rooms, 15 

Career — 

Choice of, 20; ordination, 51 ; 
curacy under Rev. H. Ward, 
51, 52-54, 285; charge of par- 
ish at Hoxton, 51, 54, 121, 123, 
124, 130; curacy under Rev. 
P. Gell, 51, 54, 135; mission 
curate and incumbent at Step- 
ney, 51. 55. 142, 159; offers 
of preferment, 111-113, 139; 
professor at Queen's College, 
Harley Street, 185 ; degrees 
and honours, 13, 14, 90, 388 
{note) ; appointment as libra- 
rian at Lambeth, and close of 
clerical career, 209, 223, 227, 
232, 461 ; review of, 51-59 
Marriage with Miss Alice Stopford, 

392 
Health, 51, 66, 68, 180, 209, 212, 

394-401; last illness and death, 

402 
Intellectual abihty, 67, 213, 384-390, 

397 
Letters — 

a Court, Mrs., 315, 320, 329, 333, 

353 
Arnold, Miss Mary {see Ward, 

Mrs. Humphry) 
B. on occupying Green's college 

rooms, 27 
Bablngton, Mrs. Churchill, 278 
Creighton, Mrs., 240-242, 267, 

274, 284, 287, 447 
Dawkins, Professor W. Boyd — 
"Ban of Kenilworlh," 152 
Battle Church, Dawkins' paper 

on, 108 
"Beating the Bounds," etc., 46- 

48 
British Association meetings, 

41, 86 
Church controversy, 80, 109, 
139 



Green, John Richard — continued. 
Letters — 

Church Liberal Association, 132 
Christianity, progress in, n8- 

120 
Druid, the, loi 
Fire in London described, 83 
Geology, 40, 42-45, 74, 81 
Haweis' sermon, 204 
History of England scheme, 

102-104, 105, 107 
Hoxton life, I2i, 122, 124, 

130 
Italy, Green's life in, 268, 280, 

325 

Letter writing, 36-39 

Liberal religious paper pro- 
posed, 161 

Librarian appointment, 231, 232 

Marriage, 136-138 

Maurice, F. D., sermon by, 
128-130 

People's Magazine, 189 

Preferment offered to Green, 
I11-113 

Privy Council judgment, 139, 
142 

Stepney life, 142, 143, 159 

Street girls' meeting, 132 

Thackeray's grave, 138 

Various topics, 29-34, 45, 72, 
77, 79, 84, 87-95, 100, 113- 
117, 123-127, 133-136, 148, 
156-159, 162, 188-190, 226, 
244-246 

Victoria Park, 147 

Ward, Mrs., death of, 96, 97 
Denison, Edward; elections, 195, 

201, 203, 205; various topics, 

204-206 
Freeman, E. A. — 

Archceology of Rome, by Parker, 

373-375 
Athe7iceum, attack on, 228-230 
" Ban of Kenilworth," 149 
Creeds, 164 
Degrees, value of, for the clergy, 

168 
D.C.L. degree conferred on 

Freeman, 253 
"English" question, 381, 431- 

433 



5o8 



LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN 



Green, John Richard — continued. 
Letters — 

Franco-German war, 259-266, 

273, 298 
Historic Course for Schools, by 

Freeman, 303-305, 339 
Historical and Architectural 

Essays, 429, 437 
" Historical Readers," 477 
History, methods of writing, 

425 ; obtaining materials for, 

144 
History of the English People, 

409, 412, 471 
Jesus College, 166 
Librarian appointment, 224, 

227, 228 
Lincoln, Green's visit to, 194 
Literary work (Green's), vari- 
ous, 172, 180, 182, 186, 192, 

317. 443. 444.478 
Making of England, 481 
Memorials of Westminster 

Abbey, 190 
National education, 170 
Norman Conquest, 179, 184, 

197-199, 200, 220-222, 226, 

301 
Old English History for Chil- 
dren, 237 
Pardon, G. F., 160 
"Primers," 249-251, 474 
" Reformation," the, etc., 360- 

362 
Short History, 234-237, 255, 

258, 314, 357-359. 375. 407, 

420 
Sources of Standard English, 

403-405 
Stubbs, Dr., inaugural lecture, 

174-178 
Travels in Italy, 272, 293-299, 

322, 335-338. z(>z, 414-418, 

473 
Various topics, 135, 154, 155, 
156, 165, 174, 231, 233, 238, 
240, 247, 252-255, 282, 305, 

330. 345-350. 356, 378, 422- 
424, 428-430, 440 
Glehn, Louise von (^see Creighton, 

Mrs.) 
Glehn, Miss Olga von, 218, 270, 



Green, John Richard — continued. 
Letters — 

277, 285, 289-293, 306, 354, 
365-369. 373. 380, 406, 419, 
424, 460 

M. J., 39 

M. M., 25, 75 

Macmillan, Alexander, 318; His- 
torical Review, 433-437 

Norgate, Miss Kate, 448, 470 

Ridgway, Rev. J., 23 

Stanley, Dean, 17 

Stopford, Miss Alice, 445, 449- 
460, 462-470 

T. O., 24 

Taylor, Rev. Isaac, 187, 327 

Ward, Mr. and Mrs. Humphry, 
311, 342, 350, 413, 439, 480, 

483 
Literary work — 

"Ban of Kenilworth," 149, 150, 

152 
" Bishop of Durham and his Rural 

Dean," 185, 187 
British Association, article on, 18& 
« Chateau-Gaillard," 186, 187 
Conquest of England, 401, 478 
Denison, E., paper on, 306 
Druid, the, article in, 61, loi 
Edward in., by Longman, review 

of, 227 
" Geography of the British Isles," 

395 
" Gildas," article on, 232 
" Historical Readers," 477 
History, best method of writing,. 

425-427 

History of Angevin Kings, mate- 
rials collected for, 387 

History of Englattd, by Pearson,, 
review of, 193 

History of the E?iglish People, 386, 
394. 395. 396. 409. 412, 438, 
441, 443, 458, 463, 471 

List of published work, 497-503 

Making of England, 399, 400, 482 

Memorials of fVestminster Abbey,, 
by Stanley, review of, 190 

Norman Conquest, by Freeman, 
review of, 184, 197-199 

"Oxford in the last century,"^ 
article on, 19 



INDEX 



509 



Green, John Richard — continued. 
Literary work — 

Poor relief, article on, 56 
Primers edited by Green, 217, 249- 
251, 449, 469 (and note), 474; 
" St. Dunstan," 62, 75, 98 
"St. Edmundsbury," article on, 

233 
Short History, 209-212, 250, 253, 
255, 258, 306, 314, 328, 330, 
331. 357-359. 380, 384-388, 
407, 411, 414. 420, 453-457. 

459. 463 

Stanley, Dean, influence of, on 
Green's work in early life, 18 

Stray Stzidies fro7n England and 
Italy, 320, 427-429 

Stubbs, Bishop, review of inaugu- 
ral lecture by, 1 74 

"Tombs at Fontevraud," 181, 182 

Various literary schemes, 61-68, 
73, 88, 94, 95, 102-104, 105, 
107, 152, 161, 217, 317, 356, 
364, 388, 444, 455; Historical 
Review, 173, 217, 234, 246, 

255. 433-437 
"Watch and Ward at Oxford," 

170 
"Whalley De Profundis," 185, 
187 
Pecuniary position, 58, 65, 135, 203, 

387 
Religious views, 9, 11, 12, 18, 68-72, 
1 18-120, 164 (see Travels in Italy; 
{see Italy), also Church) 
Green, Mrs. J. R., 392, 396, 398, 400- 
402, 478; letters to {see Stopford, 
Alice, under Letters) 
Green, Richard, Green's father, I, 2, 3 
Green, Richard, Green's brother, 2 
Greenhill, Dr. W. A., 226 
Grove, Sir George, 68, 188, 255, 258, 

290, 449 
Guest, Dr., 65, 151, 235 
Guest, Lady C., 167 

Halcombe, Mr,, 414 

Hampden, A. C. Hobart ("Hobart 

Pasha"), 458 
Harcourt, 424 
Hardy, Sir Thomas Duffus, 143, 144, 

146, 223 



Hare, Mrs., 134 

Harper, Messrs., 387, 453 

Hartshorne, Charles Henry, 149 

Hastings, 221, 224-226 

Haweis, Rev. H. R., 56, 70, 204, 290 

Hawkins, Edward, 368 

Higgs, Mr., 202 

" Historical Readers," 477 

History, ancient and modern, 174- 
177; methods of writing, 425; ob- 
taining materials for, 144 

History of the English People {see Lit- 
erary Work, under Green, J. R.) 

" Hobart Pasha," 458 

Home Rule, 391 

Hook, Dean, 143, 149 

Hope, Beresford, 189 

Howard, George, 459, 460 

Hoxton, Green's parish in, 51, 54, 121, 
123, 124, 130 

Hughes, Rev. N. T., 117 

Hunt, W. Holman, 68 

Hunt, Rev. W., 172 

Hurdis, Professor, i 

Hutton, Mr., 184 

Huxley, Thomas Henry, 44, 242 

Ireland, 34-36, 37. 39^. 45» 
Italy, progress of, etc., 283, 349 
Italy, travels in — 

Bordighera, 293 

Capri, 212, 217, 340-345. 347. 35*. 
394, 395. 473 

Ceriana, 280 

Florence, 212, 307, 322, 326, 328, 

394. 395 
Genoa, 272 
Mentone, 291, 296, 395, 400-402, 

482 
Milan, 272, 413 
Naples, 212 
Padua, 413 
Rapallo, 395 
Ravenna, 212, 215, 307 
Rome, 212, 333-338, 353, 363, 394, 

416-418 
San Remo, 212, 307, 343 
Siena, 413, 4i 5 
Venice, 212, 307, 395 
Ventimiglia, 294 
Verona, 236, 269, 307, 395, 413, 

415 



5IO LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN 



Jebb, Sir Richard C, 218, 449 

Jenkins, J. E., 440 

Jesus College, Oxford, 13-20, 62, 1 66 

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 5 

Jones, Burne, 460 

Jones, Rev. Harry, 162 

Jowett, Professor, 142, 424 

Kensington Park, 135 

Kensington Square, Green's home in, 

396 
Kershaw, Mr., 223 

Kingsley, Rev. Charles, 201, 315, 423 
Kirkham, Lanes., 12 

Lambert, Rev. Brooke, 265, 266, 401 

Leamington, 13 

Lear, Edward, 289, 290 

Lecky, W. E. H., 397 

Leighton, Sir Baldwyn, 57 

Letter-writing, 36 

Letters by Green (^see under Green, 

J-RO 

Lewis, Sir G. C, 158 

Lincoln, 194 

Literary work by Green (^see under 

Green, J. R.) 
Local Government Bill, 297, 299 
Loftie, Mr., reminiscences of Green, 

213 
Longley, Archbishop, 223 
Longman, Mr., Edward III., 227 
Lord, Francis, 292 
Lowe, Robert, 368 
Lower, Mark Anthony, 72 
Lushington, 424 
Luxor, 398 

Lyell, Sir Charles, 41, 44, 86 
Lytton, Lord, 463 

Macmillan, Alexander, kindness and 
friendship of, 209, 210, 217, 218, 
393, 394, 400, 402; Green's com- 
ments on, 95, 178, 179; discussing 
schemes of work for Green, 151, 173, 
217, 231, 256, 258; financial terms 
re Short History, 240; letters to {see 
under Letters) 
Magdalen College, Oxford, 5 
Maguire, Rev. Robert, 162, 163 
Mahaffy, Professor, 218, 414, 416 
Maine, Sir Henry J. S., 397, 423 
Making of England, 399, 400, 482 



Mallet, Sir Louis, 395 
Manning, Cardinal, 466 
Mantell, Gideon Algernon, 72 
Margate, 123-127 
Markham, Clements R., 421 
Marriage, views on, 31, 47, 136-138 
Maurice, Rev. F. D., 21, 70, 109, 128— 

130 
Mentone, 291, 296, 395, 400-402, 482 
Merivale, Herman, 155 
Milan, 272, 413 
Mill, John Stuart, 273 
Millard, Dr., 9 
Minster-in-Thanet, 243-245 
Monks, etc., in Italy, 267 
Monod, Gabriel, 264 
Moore, C, 43 
Moore, Norman, 451 
Morley, John, 386, 420 
Morris, William, 390, 440 
Motley, John Lothrop, 413; death of, 

467 
Mozley, Canon, il, 393 
Miiller, Max, 290, 423, 449 
Murchison, 86 
" My Daughters on the Beach," 207 

Naples, 212 

Napoleon I. and Italy, 349 

Napoleon III. {^see Franco-German 

War) 
Navestock, Essex, 148 
" New Historical School," 466 
Newton, Mr., 201, 203, 205 
Nichol, Professor, 449 
Norgate, Miss Kate, letters to, 448, 476 
Normandy, 212 
Nottidge, Mrs., 147 
Notting Hill, Green's curacy in, 51, 

54, 135 

Oakeley, Canon, 368 
O'Hagan, Lord, 463 
Oliphant, I,aurence, 395 
Oliphant, T. L. Kington, 403-405 
Owen, Professor Richard, 189 
Owen, Sidney, 169, 191 
Owen, Rev. Trevor, 85, 95, 158 
Oxford Historical Society, 218 
«' Oxford in the Last Century," 19 

Padua, 413 

Palgrave, Frank, 153, 239, 371 



INDEX 



511 



Pardon, George Frederick, 160, 161 

Parish duties, 54-59, 75 

Parker, John Henry, 94, 373-375» 4i6, 

417 
Pattison, Rev. Mark, 77 
Pauli, Professor Reinhold, 378, 425 
Pearson, C. H., 184, 193 
Peile, Dr., 218 
Pembroke, Lord, 320 
Pevensey, 221, 226 
Phillips, Mr., 94 
Politics, Green's interest in, 390; 

Eastern question, 440, 459, 460, 

464,472; Birmingham School, 466; 

Liberal party and elections, 479, 

480 {see' also Gladstone) 
Poor relief, 187, 205, 220 
Portsmouth, Lord, 395 
Preaching and public speaking, 58, 168 
Primers edited by Green {see Literary 

work under Green, J. R.) 
Privy Council Judgment, 139, 142, 148 
Proverbs, 24 

Radstock, Lord, 173 

Rapallo, 395 

Ravenna, 212, 215, 307 

Ridgway, Rev. J. R., 12, III; letter 

to, 23 
Robertson, Rev. James Craigie, 144, 145 
RoUeston, Mr., 72 
Rome, 212, 333-338, 353. Z^ly 394, 

416-418 
Romilly, Lord, 144, 223 
Roundell, Mr., 450 
Routh, Rev. Martin Joseph, 5, 6 (and 

note) 
Ruskin, John, 246, 248 
Rutson, Mr., 184 

"St. Dunstan," 62, 75, 98 

" St. Edmundsbury," 233 

Samuda, Mr., 201, 205 

San Remo, 212, 307, 343 

Sandford, Mr., 98 

Sand with, Humphrey, 444, 446 

School children's fresh air treat, 85, 86, 

196 
Schools, system in 1867, 171; difficulty 

of getting money for, 204 
Seeley, Sir John, 247, 248, 449 
Selborne, Lord, 395 



Sermon on Mrs. Ward, 485-495 

Sermon preaching and public speak- 
ing, 58, 168 

Sevenoaks, 306 

Shaftesbury, Lord, 273 

Shoj-i History of England {see Literary 
work under Green, J. R.) 

Sidgwick, Henry, 424 

Siena, 413, 415 

Sitwell, Rev., 243 

Smith, Professor Goldwin, 446 

Smith, Henry, 424 

Smith, Sir William, 234 

Smythe, Percy (Viscount Strangford), 
death of, 219 

Somerset Archseological Association, 
62, 88, 98 

Stanley, Dean Arthur Penrhyn, 16, 81, 

93, 130. 134, 190, 191, 446, 467 

Stanley, Lady Augusta, 16, 190, 191 

Stephen, Fitz- James, 424, 466 

Stephen, Leslie, 409 

Stepney, curacies in, 51, 55, 142, 159 

Stopford, Miss Alice, 392; letters to 
{see under Letters) ; {see also Green, 
Mrs. J. R.) 

Stopford, Archdeacon, 36 {note'), 392 

Strachey, Mr., 252 

Strangford, Lord, death of, 219 

Stray Studies from England and Italy, 
320, 427-429 

Street girls' meeting, 132 

Stubbs, Bishop, 172,315,385; friend- 
ship for Green, 63, 148, 397, 422; 
librarian at Lambeth, 144, 145, 228; 
librarian to Archbishop Longley, 
223; appointed Professor of Modern 
History at Oxford, 1 74-178 

Sweet, Mr., 442 

Switzerland, 212, 237 

Symonds, John Addington, 395 

Tait, Archbishop, 22; kindness to 
Green, 51, 139, 231, 281, 461; 
created archbishop, 51, 223 

Taylor, Canon, 395, 396 

Taylor, Rev. Isaac, letters to, 187, 

327 
Tennyson, Alfred, visit to, 393 
Thackeray, grave of, 138 
Theale, Somerset, 22 
Thorpe, Benjamin, 144 



512 LETTERS OF J. R. GREEN 



"Tombs at Fontevraud," i8i, 182 

Troyes, 214 

Tuam, Bishop of, 134 

Venables, Bishop, 223, 317 

Venice, 212, 307, 395 

Venn, Mr., 424 

Ventimiglia, 294 

Verona, 307, 395, 413, 415 

Victoria Park, 147 

Voysey judgment, 280, 291, 295 

Wallace, Mackenzie, 4, 46 
Ward, Rev. Henry, 49, 51 
Ward, Mrs. Henry, 52, 87, 96-98 (and 

note), 99, 100; Green's sermon on, 

59, 485-495 
Ward, Mr. and Mrs. Humphry, 81, 



277, 308, 312, 401; remains of 

Green, 53, 217, 389, 397; letters to 

(^see under Letters) 
Ward, Professor, 217, 433, 435 
Warren, John Byrne, Leicester, 263 
"Watch and Ward at Oxford," 170 
Wellington, Duke of, 10 
Welsh nation and character, 24, 28, 

62, 166 
"Whalley, De Profundis," 185, 187 
Whalley, G. H., 186 
Wilberforce, Bishop, 44 
Wilkins, Mr., 449 
Williams, Dr. Rowland, 139, 142 
Wilson, Rev. Henry Bristow, 139, 142 

Yonge, Charles Duke, 13 

Yonge, Miss Charlotte M., 218, 449 



A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 

WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO 

THE FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF 
ITS PROBLEMS AND CONCEPTIONS. 



DR. W. WINDELBAND, 

Professor of Philosophy in the University of Strassburg, 

AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION BY 

JAMES H. TUFTS, Ph.D., 

Associate Professor of Philosophy in the University of Chicago. 

8vo. Cloth. $4.00, nei. 



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